In Flight Gaiden: Playing with Tropes
by SatireSwift
Summary: An alternate continuation of Gabriel Blessing's fanfic In Flight. After Shirou discovers the website known as TVTropes, things start to get weird for him and his flock with the arrival of a rather unexpected man, courtesy of Zelretch...
1. Forward

First, to everyone who is confused as to what just happened to my In Flight omakes fic, I would like to say that still exists and I've created a separate fic for it. I've changed this particular fic to an actual story because the number of chapters that were related to my once called _Unlimited Trope Works_ omake series for _In Flight_ far outnumbered the rest, so it was just easier to do it this way. I also decided to change the name of the series to _In Flight Gaiden: Playing With Tropes_ because I want to use the previous title for the story of Troper's Holy Grail War, which I plan to write one of these days.

As for why I'm making this its own fic to begin with, well, it's been pointed out by a number of people that this series started gaining the potential to be its own thing around the 6th installment. Not only that, but I feel that when a piece of fiction breaks the 50,000 word mark, the term 'omake' probably doesn't apply to it anymore. So, I've decided to make this a fic in its own right.

Although, it's worth noting that this was never supposed to be even an omake. It all started when I came up with the Unlimited Trope Works aria after reading a particularly funny _In Flight_ omake about Shirou discovering the all consuming time sink that is TVTropes. I didn't have an account at the time, so I just let it sit in the back of my mind for a while. A great deal later when I did decide to get an account, the aria popped back into my head, but it seemed kinda weird to make a reference to something that happened so long ago in the forms. So, I decided that my first omake would incorporate it somehow.

At first, I was just going to make it a sort of second half to the omake that inspired it, having Shirou become so twisted by TVTropes it actually changed his Reality Marble. However, I discarded this idea because no one in the fic knew about both what his Reality Marble was supposed to be and what TVTropes was, and I wanted someone to remark on the absurdity of it. When I realized that the best person to do so would be Shirou himself, I struck upon the plot device known as Zelretch and his multidimensional shenanigans to conjure up an alternate version of Shirou.

As I was writing the omake and I thought about what this Shirou would be able to do outside of his Reality Marble, I realized with the right rules and tweaks, it could actually make him an interesting character with unique powers and limitations. After I finished the omake (which at the time I intended to be a one shot), I started pondering how exactly he became the way he did, and the outlines of a back story began. Not only that, my omake was quite well received, so (after some crack silliness with the character) I ended up continuing what happened after Shirou saw his Reality Marble. Then things just kinda got away from me and became the fic you're reading.

So there you have it. It was an aria, which became a character, which became a one shot omake, which became a back story (which I really need to write one of these days), which became this fic. Weird how that works, huh?

I would finish with the standard I Do Not Own clause that is prevalent in most fanfictions, but apparently that's completely pointless according to its TVTrope's page. You learn something new every day…


	2. Chapter 1: Your Origin is What?

I walked down the street toward Osaka Park, my head still in somewhat of a daze with words and phrases dancing across my vision like tantalizing blue specters. It had been a week since my discovery of the website known as TVTropes, and I was still feeling the effects on my mind. Even after Homura and Matsu managed to pry the doo-hicky out my hands, anytime I tried to look up information after that I always ended up back at the damn encyclopedia of hyperlinks relating to all thing fiction. It's like my own subconscious was sabotaging me to keep me from getting any work done. I remembered a number of mages back at the Clock Tower who would have be envious of its ability to so subtly and completely ensnare any mind that that sees it. Hell, I had given some half serious thought about finding a way to weaponize it against my enemies in the Mage's Association. It would be difficult given their aversion to technology, but if I could just somehow introduce them to it, then they would all be far too busy doing a Wiki Walk and TVTropes Will Ruin Your Life…

_Damn it! _I thought as I quickly shook my head free of those thoughts, lest my mind wandered back into that mnemonic labyrinth. I don't know when it started, but at some point in the last week I started to think in tropes. It had gotten to the point where I could almost picture the blue, underlined text when I thought about it. Things came to a head that morning when I referred to myself as a "Type 2 Harem Hero in a Battle Royal between Magical Girlfriends". It was at a this point Matsu decided I had been spend far too much time indoors, and promptly kicked me out of the house while she rigged every remotely electronic device in the inn to block access to TVTropes. I was headed to the park as I decided now would be a good time to see about setting up traps in the area for my next, likely inevitable, encounter with the Enforcers. _Maybe the physical labor will help me take my mind of-_

At this point my train of thought was derailed when I noticed an internet cafe I had walked in front of. I immediately felt a familiar pull on my mind, the sirens call of information calling me forth. _No! Must… resist… urge!_

I failed to resist the urge.

I spotted a free terminal in the back, next to a man that I didn't bother looking at too hard. Fortunately for me, before I could sit down, I felt a gentle but strong hand on my shoulder. "Shirou-sama, Matsu told me not let you near any computers while you were out." Oh right, I had completely forgotten about Akitsu, and her newly appointed task of protecting me from myself.

I sighed and slumped down a bit. "Thanks Akitsu, I almost gave in for a second." However, I then heard the man I was about to sit down next to give a satisfied grunt.

"Finally! A world where it exists! I swear, if that old man sent me to another dimension that didn't have TVTropes…"

Oh no. Oh god no. _How have I have started to hear hyperlinks? How is that even possible?!_ Sure enough, when I looked at the man's computer, there it was, the front page that doubled as the front gates to my own personal hell. The worst part was knowing that I had no one to blame but myself for this, that I could look away and leave at anytime, but I wouldn't.

Thankful, Akitsu once again came to my rescue. "Master?…" I heard her say in confusion. My instinct of immediately giving her my full focus whenever she spoke overrode my enchantment, but as I turned to look at her, I found she wasn't looking at me. I heard a quiet muttering of "Sweet Stripperific Jesus!" before the man and I both turned our gaze away for the snow woman and to each other, and caused me to nearly choke on my own tongue.

The man was… well, me. He was maybe a few years older, and there were a few strands of white peppered throughout his hair, but he was still unmistakably Shirou Emiya. The biggest apparent difference was his apparels, as where I was wearing a simple pair of jeans and a long shirt, he was clad in a Badass Longcoat with Fingerless Gloves, and I could see a pair of Cool Shades sticking out of his- god damn it stop thinking in hyperlinks!

The other Shirou, oblivious of my current internal strife, stared at me in surprise for a moment before holding up his hands in a placating manner. "Ok, before you start to freak out, there is a very good if complicated reason that there's another you-"

"Zelretch?" I asked.

"Zelretch." He confirmed without missing a beat.

Having saved a large amount of time on exposition with a convenient short hand for what was going on, Alter!Shirou (seriously, was there any part of my thought process that hadn't been corrupted?) looked between me and Akitsu, noting her particularly revealing clothing. He then turned to me with an arched eyebrow and a small smirk on his face. "So, master?"

I sighed and resisted the urge to palm my face. Looking at Akitsu, I noticed two spots of red on her face as she looked back and forth between me and my doppelganger. Knowing her and how much she liked the rather inappropriate video traps Matsu has set up on the doo-hicky, I'm sure she was thinking about the potential of having two of me around for… lewd purposes as Miya would say. Don't' think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it…

* * *

"So, you're basically a Type 2 Harem Hero in a Battle Royal between Magical Girlfriends?" Alter!Shirou asked as we walked down the street toward the park. He seemed interested in my story, and while I was reluctant to tell him at first, I came to the conclusion that he was unlikely to try and use it against me. He claimed to be Zelretch's apprentice (one of them anyway), and while the Wizard Marshall was known for playing rather cruel pranks invoking alternate versions of a person, I don't believe that he would ever do so with hostile intentions. He also seemed to be fairly similar to me in personality if a little more carefree, and from what little he said so for implied he had similar experiences as mine during the Holy Grail War. Although, there was one thing about him that was causing me problems.

"Ye-yeah, pretty much." I stuttered as I tried not to dwell on his words to much. The problem was that almost half of what he said was tropes. Normally, this would have just been an interesting quirk, but in my current state I had to concentrate to not drift off imagining all of that wonderful knowledge behind those phrases.

"Nice. Shame about losing the One True Threesome though. I hope you get them back" he said with genuine concern in his voice.

I heard Akitsu's chains clink behind me, her own small sign of her concern of my happiness. I gave her a brief smile, and turned back to my counterpart. "I have to ask, before we continue, could you… well, stop speaking in trope? It's giving me problems focusing"

He looked puzzled for a moment, and I thought I would have to explain myself further. Before I could continue, his eyes widened and he barked out a laugh. "Hah! So that's why Zelretch sent me here. How long has it been since you're first Wiki Walk?"

"Umm…"I said sheepishly "About a week?"

"Really? It took my Rin months of exposure to TVTropes to start hearing the hyperlinks. It's probably that spiritual osmosis thing we did with Archer. In fact," he said while rubbing his chin in thought "That probably explains why since you started talking, I've been able to think of nothing but swords."

I stopped and stared at him. We had arrived at the park at this point anyway, stopping in a small clearing some distance away from the road. I was trying to wrap my head around the implications as he continued.

"Oh, I doubt that we're going to start trading memories or abilities anytime soon. You may have recently introduced to the power of tropes, but it doesn't change the fact that we still have different Origins in regards to our magic. That's far too large of a hurdle to overcome."

My brain finally put the pieces together, and the conclusion was both fascinating and terrifying. "Wait, your Origin is-" That was as far I got before I noticed something over his shoulder, and that's what saved our lives.

I quickly moved past him, standing in front of both Alter!Shirou and Aktisu. I Reinforced my body, threw up my right hand, and incanted "Rho Aias!" The seven layered shield came into existence barely in time to stop the fireball that was heading toward the three of us. Rather than exploding, the ball splashed against the shield like it was made of liquid, flowing across the ground around us and making an irregularly shaped wall of flame. Before my vision was obscured, I managed to make out a man standing at the edge of the clearing, and I could definitely tell from his scent that he was a magus. Given how he launched a surprise attack rather than a monologue, it was a fair guess that he was an Enforcer. I silently cursed to myself. _How did they find me here? I didn't feel my ge__as activate. Was it pure chance? _If it was, I guessed it was lucky for me that I was jumped in the one place in the city that I was willing to use my abilities to their fullest, though I would have much preferred to not be attacked at all.

I didn't have much time to think on this point, as I heard my counterpart behind me say "Guns Akimbo, Shoot The Bullet!" Sparing a glance back, I saw that Alter!Shirou had somehow acquired a pair of pistols and was shooting down a number of glowing motes which exploded on contact with his bullets. Likewise, I heard a familiar clink of chains and cracking of ice as a wall of it formed to my left, stopping a lightning bolt from catching me in the side. _Of course there's more than one,_ I thought to myself with irritation.

The next minute or so was something of a blur made out of fire, light and explosions. There turned out to be five Enforcers in total, and to their credit they were quite good. While the group as a whole seemed to focus on the more destructive applications of magic, they were quite proficient at covering each other's backs too, the point that even Aktisu, who was likely more powerful than any of them individually, couldn't manage to land a hit. Alter!Shirou was in much the same state. I could hear shouts of "High Speed Missile Dodge" and "Kung-Fu Clairvoyance", which seemed to keep him from being hit, but even his "Improbable Aiming Skills" couldn't find a solid mark. The end result was that the three of us were being pushed into the center of clearing. They were trying to tire us out for capture. I was pretty sure that if they wanted us dead, the lot of them had enough firepower to turn the whole area into a smoldering crater.

Things were looking bad as the three of us found ourselves back to back. As the next wave of attacks came at us, I called out "Akitsu, enclose us!"

Akitsu put out her arms, and a dome of ice about 3 meters wide surrounded us. I rushed forward and slapped my hand against the ice, ignoring the biting cold and Reinforcing the protective shell as best I could. I could feel the impacts through the ice, but the barrier held for the moment. _This is bad_… I thought to myself. _Even with both of us working together, we can only hold this for so long, and it's not like we run away._

"Do you have a plan?" Alter!Shirou asked. I turned to look at him and all of the mirth and easy going attitude I had come to know him for had disappeared from his face, replaced with a gaze that could cut steel. The most disturbing part was that it was my own face doing it. _Is that really what I look like when I'm serious? No wonder my flock gets scared of me sometimes._

"Not really," I admitted "I'm just stalling for time." I sighed. "I'm sorry, but I doubt that they will just let you go. I don't know what they think of the fact that there are two of me running around, but they'll probably capture us both to hedge their bets."

He shrugged. "Occupational hazard of dimensional travel." He looked up in thought for a moment before coming to a decision "How long will that shield hold?"

"A few dozen seconds at most." I replied. I could feel the Enforces starting to focus their firepower, and even with my Reinforcement and Akitsu continuously making new layers, they were slowly burning their way through.

"That's all the time all need." He replied, a small smirk returning to his face "You've talked enough about yourself, so let me tell you about myself". He closed his eyes in concentration and took a moment to focus before he began to speak.

"**I am the lampshade of my trope.**"

Oh you have got to be kidding me.

"**Indexes are my mind, and references are my thoughts****.**"

I don't' know why, but I'm pretty sure this is Zelretch's roundabout way of mocking me.

"**I have ****been author to countless epics****.**"

You know what? I curse the Root for this. I curse the Root most strongly.

"**Only I see past the Wall, knowing the truth of fiction****.**"

As my concentration wavered, I noticed the first crack in the ice shield.

"**I have withstood plot twists to continue narratives.**"

Another crack formed. And another, and another. I heard my counterpart's voice begin to rise.

"**Searching endlessly for my happy ending!**"

The crack had become a spider web. Just a few more seconds...

"**And so I know, ****m****y**** entire story has been,**"

The dome shattered and evaporated under the combined fire power. It was then Alter!Shirou finally opened his eyes.

"**Unlimited Trope Works!**"

There was a wave of cold fire, and world changed. We were no longer in a clearing. In fact, I'm not sure we were anywhere. There was what seemed to be an endless white void in all directions, making it rather hard to see how we were standing. But it wasn't just void, there were words floating throughout the space. No, they were just words, they were stories. The elements of stories, narrative and fiction, all connected by common threads into a single glorious web of knowledge. A man could go mad looking at it, trying to find all of the connections until days had passed and he couldn't remember who he was or how he got there. Root knows it almost happen to me.

Breaking my gaze from the world around me, I saw that at the center of all of this was Alter!Shirou, and I realized just what his ability really meant. His Origin was Tropes, so in the same sense that I could use my od to form swords, he could use his to create and manipulate narrative devices like tropes for use in real life. And if his Reality Marble was anything like mine, that could only mean one thing.

He had access all the tropes. All of them.

He strolled forward, the Enforcers looking confused and worried. "Gentlemen, welcome to my story. I'm particular fond of it, though I have a feeling you won't like how this scene ends." He said with a wicked grin. Then, with a wave of his hand, the world was consumed in a meta-fictional firestorm.


	3. A Crack in Tropes: A Terrible Plan

As I sat in the dining room researching Ashikabi and Sekirei, Troper!Shirou (as he had started to call himself) walked up to me with a grin on his face that I had learned to dread. Since the fight at Osaka Park, he had been staying at the Izumo House with me and the rest of my flock. At the time, he had saved my life and had no money that would work in this dimension, so it seemed like the least I could do was to offer him a place to stay for a while.

I was coming to regret that decision.

"I have a plan!" he exclaimed, a glint of crazy in his eye.

"No! Absolutely not! Your plans are always terrible, insane, and leave nothing but chaos in their wake!" I returned.

"What? That's nonsense, my plans are Crazy Awesome and you know it." said as he dismissed my objections with a casual wave of his hand. "Besides, this one is guaranteed to stop the Sekirei Plan."

"The last time you had a 'plan', I woke up, my ass hurt, and there were cake crumbs everywhere! All I can remember is that there was a plan and that it went horribly wrong!"

"Yeah, that's always a risk with the 'surprise cake' maneuver." he said sheepishly. I tried desperately not to think about what 'surprise cake' could be. "Anyway, we need to make a few stops so we can get the team together."

"No! I'm not doing it! Whatever you're thinking, I'll have no part of it! I don't trust you!"

"Shirou," Troper!Shirou said with unusual solemness "If you can't trust the me that trusts in you, then you can't trust in yourself that trusts in you, but I trust you because I trust the me that trusts you."

"Wait, but… you're me, so that means… If I trust… but then… " My brain shut down as I tried to process the Mind Screw.

"Great! Let's go!" Taking advantage of his weaponized confusion, he grabbed my hand, incanted "Portal Network, Another Dimension.", and we slipped into the void between dimensions.

* * *

"So, that's the plan." Troper!Shirou said.

The King of Swords looked at him in complete bafflement. "And why, in the name of the Root, would I ever want to do that?"

"Well, think of it like this: the echoes of manliness will be so great, they will reverberate all the way to the Root itself, filling it with shame as it can never be as manly as us. In this way, you can, at least metaphorically, kick the root in the balls." He said this completely nonsensical statement with upmost certainty.

The me who looked like a blue clad Archer thought this over of a second, before replying "Ok, I'm in."

"How did that convince you?" I screamed.

"Wait!" A busty redhead who had been listening to the conversation suddenly spoke up. "There is absolutely no way I would miss Darling in such a performance. I'm coming too!" The small bluette that was standing next to her nodded her agreement, and though her face was in a book, I could see that she had the decency to blush furiously.

"Kirche!" a pink haired girl ground out. "If you're going, I'm going too, if only to keep your amorous hands off my Servant."

A maid nearby managed to break her current fit of wiggles and 'Kyaaa' to add "Master will need me afterwards to… clean up." And she went right back to the wiggles.

I sighed as I knew the madness was just beginning.

* * *

"So, that's the plan." Troper!Shirou said.

The patriarch of the Emiya Clan leaned back in his chair, small frown crossing his face. "I see. And why do you want to recruit me?"

At this, my Troperiffic counterpart raised an eyebrow. "You have over twenty wives. It's clear that you're skills will be perfect for this operation."

"Fair point, but-"

He was then interrupted by over twenty female voices."You're doing this and we're coming with!"

The man sighed, looked over his shoulder and said "Yes dears." He turned back to us. "So, should we get going?"

"Not yet," Troper!Shirou responded. "You have a summoning circle here, right? We still need to recruit the last team member…"

* * *

"So, that's the-"

"No." Archer was not having any of this.

"But I-"

"No."

"If I could just-"

"No."

Troper!Shirou sighed and shrugged in an exaggerated manner. "Oh well, I guess that means there's nothing I can do. I mean, it's not like I can give you some sort of absolute command using some kind of sigil- _oh wait._" he said with a wicked grin as he held up the sword shaped symbol on his left hand.

Archer narrowed his eyes. "I hate you so much."

* * *

"This is so stupid." I said as the entirety of our group stood in the middle of the street. After we returned to my dimension, my counterparts and I had changed into some truly terrible outfits, and were now waiting for… something.

"No, it's pure genius." I glared at the instigator of this ridiculous plan and imagined him dying via a large number of swords. He looked at his watch. "The audience should be arriving in 3… 2… 1…"

Right on cue and for no apparent reason at all, the street suddenly became full of every Sekirei still active, including my own flock. It was somewhat confusing for them as they were standing next to their alternate dimension counterparts. However, they weren't the only doubles.

"Shirou!" I heard two familiar cries in the crowd. There, standing next to the older me's Rin and Saber were, well, my Rin and Saber. Their current mood was switching between happiness at seeing me and utter bafflement at what was going on.

I stared slack jawed at them for a few seconds before I rounded on the man I was sure was responsible for this madness. "Wait just a god damn minute! How did Rin and Saber get here? How did all the Sekirei suddenly show up? Since when can you travel dimensions at a whim? How did you know about these alternative versions of me? And how the hell did that guy manage a stable relationship between himself and over two dozen women?"

"A Wizard Did It."

There was a good ten second of me gaping like a fish before I closed my mouth. I… honestly had no way to respond to that.

"Alright!" Troper!Shirou said, ignoring my catatonic state. He raised his voice and in true Big Ham fashion announced to the crowd "The stage is set, and the players are ready. Ladies, Behold! Rule of Sexy Musical Episode!"

With those final worlds, a heavy beat began resonate all throughout the street. Seeing no way to end this nonsense but to see it through, I lined up with my counterparts, with Troper!Shirou taking the lead in the middle. As we began to strut down the street, he began to sing.

And it was incredibly embarrassing.

_When I walk on by, girls be looking like damn he's fly_

_I pay to the beat, walking on the street with in my new lafreak, yeah_ _This is how I roll, animal print, pants out control,_ _It's real fool with the big afro_ _They like__ bruce lee rock at the club_

Were these lyrics supposed to make sense? Either way, all eyes were on us.

_Girl look at that body_

_Girl look at that body_

_Girl look at that body_ _I work out_

_Girl look at that body_

_Girl look at that body_

_Girl look at that body_ _I work out_

Every single woman I could see was blushing a luminescent red. My Rin's jaw was so far open I was worried she dislocated it. That's when the five of us started to strip.

_When I walk in the spot, this is what I see_ _Everybody stops and they star__ing at me_ _I got passion in my pants and I ain't afraid to show it_

With that, the five of us ripped off our pants to show off 5 brightly colored banana hammocks. We were a horrify mockery of a super sentai team.

_I'm sexy and I know it_

With Troper!Shirou's first pelvic thrust, half of the women present passed out from blood loss.

_I'm sexy and I know it_

I was somewhat surprised that Miya had yet to unleash her Hannya Mask on the lot of us for lewd behavior. However, looking in her direction I saw the reason for that was she was one of the first ones to pass out! Oh, I'm going to have so much fun teasing her about that later.

The rest of the song went predictably. The some of the more fortuitous women managed to hold out for a while, when we got to the part with the wiggles it was all over. When we finally finished, all the women were passed out with blood dripping from their noses, the few men present were hanging their heads in defeat, and I swear I could feel reality shudder as if we just kicked it in the balls with shame.

As I to note of the damage the lot of us has caused, I slowly turned to mad mastermind behind all this. "Ok, just one thing: HOW IN GOD'S NAME IS THIS SUPPOSED TO STOP THE SEKREI PLAN?"

"Simple!" Troper!Shirou exclaimed. "When they all wake up, they will be far too busy trying to have sex with us to even remember what the Sekirei Plan is, thus causing the whole thing to fall apart."

"God damn it, why does every plan you make end with you having sex with someone?"

There was a long moment where he gave me a confused look. "Wait, you mean there are plans that don't end that way?"


	4. Chapter 2: Meet the Flock

It ended up being late afternoon by the time Akitsu and I finished burying the Enforcers' bodies. Alter!Shirou was sleeping against a tree off to the side of the clearing. It turned out that while my counterpart was more skilled at his Reality Marble in that he could actually deploy it, it still was a massive drain on both his prana and physical stamina. A soon as the Enforcers were dead and Unlimited Trope Works dropped, Alter!Shirou all but passed out from exhaustion on the spot. It gave the impression that the only way he managed to use it as all was to Cast From Hitpoints.

I mentally sighed, letting the shovel I had traced dissolve into nothingness. Now that I had met my trope powered alter ego and seen the projection of his soul, it was unlikely my little "thinking in hyperlinks" problem was going to get better anytime soon. I inspected the area to make sure that there were no signs that someone had dug 5 body sized holes. Seriously, at this rate I wouldn't be surprised if someone who found the steadily increasing number of bodies suddenly appearing in the park thought that there was a serial killer on the loose.

Not finding anything that could incriminate me, I walked over to Alter!Shirou. He was muttering to himself in his sleep, though from what I could make out, it wasn't even remotely coherent. All I could understand was "best plan ever" and "I'm sexy and I know it…". I gently nudged him with my foot and asked "Hey, are you ready to go?"

He sat up with a start and blurted out "Super sentai banana hammock!" There was a long, uncomfortable minute where we just stared at each other as nether one of us could figure out where to go for there. Eventually, Alter!Shirou looked off to the side sheepishly. 'Sorry about that. I don't know if it's a side effect of my abilities, but I have _really_ weird dreams."

I tilted my head to the side. "Do I want to know?"

"I would think not. Don't worry, my memory of them fades with time, and I'm pretty sure they're not Canon."

"Canon?"

"Don't worry about it," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. He then stood up with a groan, brushing off his pants. "In any case, I'm good enough go off on my own."

I frowned in thought for a moment before asking "Do you have a place to stay?"

"Not really," Alter!Shirou replied. "I only arrived a few hours ago, and unless the current system of currency accepts copper coins as legal tender, I don't have any money either. Don't worry though," he tried to reassure me after seeing the look on my face "This isn't even close to the first time I've been homeless in a strange new place."

I made up my mind on the spot. "The inn I'm stay at has some room left, and the landlady there never turns down someone in need. You can stay with me there."

He seemed reluctant to accept my invitation. "No, no, it's fine. I don't want to be a burden."

This made me smile a bit. While we may have turned out a bit different, we were still very close to the same person. His desire to shoulder his problems on his own mirrored my own feelings on that matter. Or they would have if Matsu hadn't called me out on it after the Fraga magus' attack. "You saved all of our lives from something that should have been my problem to begin with. At least accept this as a form of repayment."

He sighed and rubbed the back of his head, smiling to himself. "You would be able to convince me, wouldn't you? Alright, let's go."

As the three of us started our walk back to the inn, I asked him "By the way, we need a way differentiate between the two of us when we get there." It would be confusing to everyone in the inn if we both responded to Shirou, and I didn't want to call him Alter!Shirou as that seemed vaguely insulting.

My counterpart thought to himself for a second before responding with a grin "Call me Troper."

* * *

By the time we got back to the inn, it was just about time for dinner. On the way, Troper gave his own story of what happened during his Grail War. It was… interesting to say the least. Although, some of the things he talked about were things I think I would have preferred not hearing. Such things like some of his experiences with his Rin and Saber…

"…And that was the weirdest thing I ever did to a girl backwards." he concluded as we crossed the threshold of the Izumo House.

I gave him and unsettled expression. "You know what, how about we never talk about that again."

"Ah…" I heard from behind me. Sure enough when I looked behind me, Akitsu had 2 spots of red on her face. "I liked that." she said in disappointment. I tried to resist the urge to palm my face.

I failed to resist the urge.

"Ara ara," I heard from the kitchen. "Emiya-kun, you wouldn't happen t be talking about lewd things, are you?" The voice grew closer, and Miya rounded the corner. When she saw the three of us, she paused and her normally crinkled eyes widened in shock at seeing my doppelganger. "What's this? Perhaps something else from your mysterious past?" Because I was looking for it, I managed to see the subtle shift in Miya posture, readying herself for conflict. It seems that since the Fraga magus showed that there were people in this world who could actually pose a credible threat to her, she had decided not to take any chances with the man that looked exactly like me.

"It's… complicated," I said. "In any case, I had a run in with that "mysterious past" of mine while I was out, and he saved both mine and Akitsu's life." Miya titled her head a bit and looked at Troper with a look of curiosity. I continued "He just got in to town and doesn't have anywhere to go, so I thought he could stay here."

Miya stayed tense for a moment long before relaxing. "Well, if did help you, I suppose it would be the least I can do. Besides," she said with her eye crinkling and a smile returning to her face "My husband would never turn down someone in need."

When both my counterpart and I relaxed, I realized just how tense he had been as well. In fact, the way he had been looking a Miya the whole time reminded me of when I first met Miya. _Hmm…_ I wondered, _does that mean he also has my magic sense? He never mentioned it_ .

My musing were cut short by a familiar cry of "Onii-chan!" as Kuu-chan came in from the living room and ran at me to latch onto my legs. However, as there were two of me standing right next to each other and she was only a second away from having her momentum carry her into us, she didn't exactly have time to think about what was going on. So, her little mind came to the conclusion to just latch on to us both, around my left leg and his right. It was adorable as it was awkward.

"Gah! Moe!" Troper exclaimed in surprise as the young plant mistress attached herself to his leg.

It was at this point Kusano realized the legs she was holding onto belonged to different people. She looked between him and me in confusion."Why are there two Onii-chans?"

"It's… complicated. Look, I'll explain everything at dinner." I said as I tried to placate the young girl.

Having decided that I was the original she looked up at Troper and asked in a hopeful voice "Does other Onii-san have swords too?"

He gave her a smile "No, instead of swords, I have tropes."

"But Kuu-chan wants swords!" she said piteously, unshed tears welling up in her eyes. While I'm sure she had no idea what tropes were, she had already decided that they were inferior to swords.

"Guh! I… but…" It seems his ability to resist Kuu's 'sad face' was about as good as mine, which is to say, not at all. With a sigh of defeat, he put out his hand and incanted "Inverted Absurdly Sharp Blade." Then, in a rather similar manner as my own tracing, a generic looking broadsword appeared in his hand.

""Yay! Sword!" Kusano exclaimed as she reached up for the blade.

"Kuu-chan!" Miya chided the younger Sekirei. "I've told you that little girls shouldn't play with swords. You could cut yourself!"

"Actually Miya, that would be impossible…" I said, looking at the sword Troper made with intense curiosity. "That is the dullest sword I have ever seen in my life. It's so dull that the dullness extends a few inches from the blade, making it impossible to touch." Indeed, Kuu's hands hand stopped a few inches from the blade, her efforts to reach it just pushing the sword further away from her. I heard a familiar rumbling in her chest as an angry "Fuuuuuuuuu!" signaled her frustration at the situation.

Before Kuu decided to rectify the situation with her teeth in his leg, the rest of my flock started to show up. The first in was Homura, who froze on the spot with a choking sound coming from his throat. Right behind him was Matsu, who rather than freezing, keep walking forward without taking her widening eyes off Troper. This caused her to walk into Homura and make them both stumble. They could have recovered from this, but Tsumkiumi, who was too busy in one of her usual arguments with Musubi to see where she was going, walked into the hall from the other direction and crashed into the pair. Then the three of them tried to grab onto Musubi for balance, which just caused all four of them to go down in a heap. Finally, Kazehana came in from the stairwell. She looked at the pile of Sekirei, shrugged, and dove onto the pile herself, not knowing what was going on, but wanting to be a part of it nonetheless.

One hand wasn't enough for this Disaster Dominoes. Cue double face palm.

"How?" I heard Homura's voice from the bottom of the pile. "How is it you keep finding ways to make things more absurd? There has to be a limit! Why do you keep doing this to me?" It seemed he was taking this latest affront to view of reality somewhat personally. The rest of my flock then began clamoring for answers as well.

"It's… complicated." I said weakly, but I was pretty sure that none of them could hear me over each other. As I was readying myself to take control of the situation, a felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Don't worry, I've got this one" Troper said, and he moved past me to stand in front of my flock. "Right. Introduction time. Dramatic Wind!" A breeze sudden sweep through the hall of the Izumo House, causing his longcoat to billow out behind him. The effect was quite impressive, and it caused everyone on the hall to stop talking and focus on him. He settled into a Badass Arm Fold pose and said "My name is Shirou Emiya! I am the Lord of Tropes, a Dimensional Journeyman, and an eternal Seeker of the Happily Ever After!" He gave a grin. "You can call me Troper."

My flock gave an "Ooooooo" of appreciation. Showoff.


	5. Chapter 3: The Table of Exposition

"So, let me get this straight," Homura said as he cradled his forehead in his hand. "You're a Shirou Emiya from a parallel dimension who's currently traveling the multiverse with a nigh-immortal sorcerer, and you have the magical ability to invoke certain narrative devices in reality?"

"I'm also incredibly good looking, too."

I sighed as Homura's eyebrow twitched at Toper's response. Once everyone managed to settle down, the whole of the Izumo House gathered around the dinner table for what was rapidly becoming a tradition of explaining the latest reality changing event that had occurred. Most of the explaining had happened over dinner and the lot of us were sipping tea at this point. Overall, I was surprised at how quickly my flock had accepted Troper, not to mention the whole situation in general. It's likely that this would have taken a lot more getting used to if I hadn't already explained the 5 True Magics to them a little over a week ago. Hell, I should probably be thankful that he didn't show up 2 weeks ago, before anyone in the household knew magic was real. It would have been particularly difficult to pass him off as some sort of long lost twin if Matsu decided to look into it. In any case, except for maybe Homura, the rest of the household seemed to get along with my doppelganger just fine. Though in some cases, I kind of wish they didn't.

"Ah-ha, there is certainly no denying that," Kazehana said, giving a not-at-all chaste look at my counterpart. "I wonder how many Shirou's we can get to show up here?" She stole glances between him and me, a dark gleam shining in her eyes. Likewise, Matsu was laughing her perverted old man giggle at this comment. It seems that Akitsu wasn't the only one of my Sekirei that was considering the possibilities of have more than one of me around. Of course, it was Tsukiumi that took this line of reasoning to its terrible conclusion.

"Shirou…" she started, twiddling her index fingers and looking off to the side with a blush. "I know you're not into… that. But, since he's you, then technically-"

"No!" Both Troper and I interrupted simultaneously. Neither one of us particularly cared for the Screw Yourself scenario.

"Oh my," The room began to darken behind Miya, and a familiar sense of doom flooded the dining room "I hope you're not implying anything lewd." The all too familiar hannya mask of her Demon Head technique began to appear over her shoulder.

Before the landlady could start to apply he technique in earnest, I quickly tried to change the subject. "So, Toper! Does Zelretch frequently drop you off in random dimensions to fend for yourself?"

The darkness receded and the mask disappeared, Miya frowning slightly at one of her lectures being headed off. However, Troper wasn't going to let it go that quickly.

"What the hell was that?" He asked, his face pale, pointing to the spot behind the landlady where her avatar of malice so nearly formed.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." She gave her usual response with a coy smile. Since it had been sometime since everyone staying at the inn had gotten use to Miya's traditional form of punishment, I think she actually enjoyed the chance to outright deny she had done anything again.

"But… there was… you just…"He was greeted with nothing but her smiling face. He looked around the table for support, but he found nothing but blank looks. "So, were all just going to ignore that?" Upon being greeted with more silence, he decided to move on from that weirdness. "Um, well, no. Not as often as you think," he said, turning to me. "He only does that when he finds a world that he thinks will teach me something. Or will provide a challenge. Or if he thinks it's funny. Or if he's bored." Troper frowned in irritation at that last one. "In any case, most of the time I'm the one that does the cross dimensional jumps. He just gives advice and instruction."

Uzume frowned at this. "Wait, if you can do that, doesn't that mean you're one of those sorcerer guys too?"

My counterpart rubbed the back of his head, looking off to the side. "Not… exactly. While a Reality Marble is quite impressive, it's not considered a form of True Magic, though that's likely because it's so rare that it's outside normal classification."

Uzume looked confused at this explanation. "Reality Marble? What's that?"

Toper looked at me in mild surprise. "I thought you said you told them about magic."

I gave him an even look back. "That's a bit esoteric, and I didn't feel that going into depth about that particular subject was important." Though I keep my tone neutral, I sent a clear message to my double that I didn't want to talk about this. This wasn't something that my flock needed to know about.

Troper raised an eyebrow, as if saying _if they knew what a __Reality__ Marble me__a__nt, I doubt they'd agree with you__._ A Reality Marble was basically a reflection of a person's soul onto the world around them, and it was only possible if that person has a sufficiently distorted perception to begin with. I had a feeling that the creatures who were biologically compelled to love me wouldn't be too happy to learn that I sometimes view myself as nothing but a weapon.

We stared at each other for a second longer before he resumed talking. "Well, he's right. It would take awhile to explain and the differences aren't important at the moment. The short of it is I can do something that can emulate a sorcery, but it's not a sorcery itself."

He took a sip from his tea while everyone pondered this. I doubted that they really understood what he was talking about, but it should be enough of an explanation to tide them over for now. Like he said, Reality Marbles fell outside of standard classification due to their rarity and how it's forbidden to research them. Still, imposing you're soul on reality around you to change it to your liking is an inherently temporary thing, which is a big mark against it being a form of True Magic. It made me wonder just how his version of the Second Magic really worked. Was it really possible to alter the laws of reality to connect it to _another_ reality? I was well aware of the Another Dimension trope, but it's not specific as to how travel between dimensions is done.

I was broken out of my musings when Musubi asked Troper "So, where are you trying to go?"

I almost missed it, but he froze for just a split second before turning to the bear Sekirei. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"I asked where you were going," she replied cheerfully. "Is there a certain place you're trying to get to?"

"I'm… not trying to go anywhere really," he responded in a pleasant tone that didn't reach his eyes. "For me, is all about the journey and what I can learn along the way."

_He's not lying, but he's not being completely honest either, _I thought. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised that this other version of myself had his own secrets to keep. Being someone who appreciated the right to privacy, I decided to change the subject before any of my Sekirei picked up on his hesitation.

However, I was beaten to it by Miya. "Well, I hope your stay here will give you rest from your long journey of enlightenment. How long do you think you will be staying?"

He gave a noncommittal shrug. "Somewhere between a few days and a few weeks. Possibly even a few months."

"Oh?" The landlady arched an eyebrow. "You can't be any more specific than that?"

"Honestly? No. The amount of time I spend in a dimension is almost entirely determined by how long it takes Rin to find me."

"You mean Shirou-tan's lover in England?" Mastu asked.

"Yes. Well, no. I mean MY Rin." He snapped his fingers in realization. "Sorry, I forgot to tell you. I'm not Zelretch's only apprentice. Rin's one too. She can more accurately have the title sorcerer applied to her. Well," he looked off to the side again. "for a certain definition of sorcerer anyway. While she can use the Second Magic, she still doesn't have master over it. In fact, half of the training we do involves me traveling to a random dimension and then her trying to find me."

"Wait, find you?" Homura spoke up. It seems he had finally started to accept the absurdity of the situation enough to start analyzing it. "How can she find you if you're in a different universe? Aren't there an infinite number of them?"

"There are both more and less universes than you think, so 'infinite' is somewhat incorrect in this case. However, it can be said without a doubt that there are 'a lot' so you're point still stands." Troper reached beneath his shirt from his neck and pulled out a small red jewel on a cord. I recognized it as the same jewel which Rin had used to save my life that fateful night I summoned Saber. "After a great deal of effort on both our parts, Rin and I managed to turn this into a sort of specialized homing beacon. So long as I have it on me, she'll find me eventually."

"But if that's the case," Matsu interjected, a confused look on her face. "Why is it that the range of time in which it takes her to find you so large? Can't you guess based on past data?"

"Three reasons:" He responded, holding up his hand with 3 fingers extended. "The first is that the mutiverse is not exactly easy to navigate. It is not a grid where you can just look for what you want. It's a sea made of everything that was, is, will be, could have been, might be and may will be expanding and collapsing in directions the human mind can't comprehend. Not to mention the fact it's constantly changing in 'shape' based on how universes are related to one another." He sighed and closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead as he did do. "Honestly, I'm not sure how Zelretch isn't completely off his rocker by now. Although, on the other hand…" Troper looked off into space, deep in thought.

"Umm, Troper-tan?"

"Hmm? Oh right, sorry." He shook his head as if to rid himself of bad thoughts. "Anyway the second reason is that because this complexity, Rin sometimes gets frustrated and uses a… shortcut."

"A shortcut?" I asked. It had been a long time since I had been on the receiving end on a lecture about magic, and this was the first time I had heard anything in depth about the Second Magic. Besides being fascinating, I was sure I could make use of it somehow later.

"She finds it rather unpleasant and thus doesn't use it often, so I'm never sure when she'll show up far earlier than she should. She would be very upset with me if I elaborated on the mater any further." As he said this he looked like he was trying to suppress a giggle.

"I see. So what's the third reason?" Miya asked the prospective tenet.

Toper settled back with a small smile on his face. "The third thing that determines when Rin will show up is how long it will take me to accidently end up in a compromising, It's Not What It Looks Like situation for her to walk in on, thus causing Hilarity Ensues."

There was a brief silence around the table before Homura spoke up. "What? You cannot be serious."

"I'm very serious. It's happened enough times that it's probably a more reliable metric than the first two reasons. In fact," he said while rubbing his chin with a contemplative look on his face, "Considering the fact that I'm going staying in an inn full of busty young women who are currently involved with a nearly identical version of myself, it's probably a safe bet that she'll be showing up sooner rather than later."

"Oh god, you really are serious…" Homura stated, suddenly realizing and clearly dreading the wacky hijinks which a man powered by tropes would inevitably bring to the Izumo House.

"I am nothing if not Genre Savvy." Troper stated with some pride. Considering what his abilities were, that statement was bordering on the profound.

It was Kazehana who pick up on the detail he hadn't spoken of. "What about Saber? Does she not travel with you and Rin? Or maybe you're not as much as a man as my Shirou-chan and didn't manage to keep both?" She said this in a playful and teasing manner, clearly not meaning it to be a serious insult on his masculinity. He had been nonspecific as to the status of his relationship with Rin and Saber up to this point, so I was also suddenly curious as to why he hadn't made any mention of her after he recounted his telling of his Holy Grail War.

It was surprising how quickly his mood changed. The smile left his face, replaced by a look of melancholy. His posture slumped a bit, and he stared into his teacup. He stopped talking and a heavy silence settled over the dining room. It was clear to everyone in the room that we had just stumbled onto a topic which he did not want to talk about. Well, almost everyone.

"Hey, yeah! What about Saber? Didn't you find love with her too?" Musubi said, completely ignorant of the tension that suddenly filled the room.

He gave Musubi an unreadable look. "She…" He began before he stopped to recompose himself. "Saber isn't with us."

"Eh? Why not? Didn't you love her?"

"Look, I don't want to talk about." Troper said, mirroring the reluctance I first had at telling my flock about Rin and Saber.

"Why don't you-"

"Because it's not fair what happened to her." He interrupted, his tone perhaps a little more sharp than he had intended.

A tense silence settled before Matsu of all people said "Let it go, Musubi." It seems she still remembers how poorly forcing information from my personal life to surface went, and didn't want to relive the experience.

Troper sighed and put his head in his hand. "I'm sorry; I must be more tired than I thought from the battle this afternoon." He pushed himself up from the table and looked at Miya. "It might be best if I retire. If it's alright I would like to adjourn to one of your rooms."

"Of course," she replied, rising from her own seat. "We can handle the paperwork later. Let me show you were you will be staying."

I watch the two of them leave the room, suddenly wondering just how he felt about our two different circumstances, and which one he thought was better.

* * *

Things had settled down by the next day. Troper returned to his usual, playful self by the morning, and life had carried on as normal for the most part. As it turned out, Miya couldn't officially have him rent as he didn't have any kind of valid identification in this universe, so it was decided that if anyone asked we would just say that he was me and try to keep anyone from seeing the both of us at the same time. Still Miya was insistent, not unreasonably, that my counterpart should do something to earn his keep.

I grumbled to myself as I walked down the street, carrying several large bags of food. Unfortunately for me, it turned out that Troper was just as good a cook as I was. As Miya was still punishing me for damage done to her inn from the Fraga magus attack, this was the perfect solution for allowing my fine cuisine to fill the Izumo House once again while still keeping me from the joy of actually cooking it. It just seemed so unfair.

I was mulling over this injustice as I walked past the fence of the inn, so I was caught completely by surprise when a painfully familiar voice called out from behind me. "Shirou!" A sharp intake of breath and my magic sense of smell confirmed the sudden feeling of heartache I felt. They found me! How? When? Oh god, what would I say to them?

I turn around… and the logic centers of my brain promptly ground to a halt at the absurdity I was witnessing.

It was Rin, running across to street toward me, but that wasn't the part that made me gape like a fish out of water. What was responsible for that was what she was wearing. It looked vaguely like a bright red dress from Victorian Europe, if such things had no arms and the overly frilly skirt barely went down to mid thigh. The front was embroidered with gold and it had a slim, pink cape which split into two trailing off the back. She had long fingerless gloves running all the way up her arms which matched the red stockings on her legs. But perhaps the strangest part of the getup was on her head, which appeared to be a pair of cat ears. This combined with the rod in her right hand which was topped by a star and a pair of wings led to only one conclusion: Rin, my former lover and one of the most talented magus' in the world, was dressed like a Magical Girl. My brain simply couldn't accept that conclusion though, so it decided to turn itself off for a bit.

"Don't give me that look!" she said in a huff, crossing her arms across her chest. "I was looking for you for a month before Zelretch showed up and told me he sent you somewhere else he thought was funny. So yes, I used the damn stick." She began waving said 'stick' at my face. "Now fix it! Fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it!"


	6. A Crack in Tropes: Magical Madness

I sat on the porch of the Izumo House, sipping from a glass of orange juice with one hand and an IV drip stuck in my other arm. This was the first moment I truly had to rest after the nearly week long orgy that ensued after Troper!Shirou forced me and 3 of my alternate dimension counterparts to give that highly inappropriate performance in front of all the Sekirei. I swear, if I didn't have my Reinforcement abilities, my pelvis would have been shattered into pieces. Still, I have to give credit where credit was due, as it did managed to get all the Sekirei to stop fighting. After they finally had their fill of me and my counterparts, they decided as a group that the whole Sekirei Plan was stupid, went back to MBI Headquarters and promptly beat the crap out of Minaka. Now they were in the process of reactivating the rest of their kind. Not only that, I was reunited with my Rin and Saber. Normally I would have been worried about how they would respond to fact that I was accidently married to several aliens, but considering what they had been participating in alongside said aliens for the past week or so, I was sure that it would probably work itself out. And, to top of my run of good fortune, that morning I had received word from the Clock Tower that my Sealing Designation had been dropped. Apparently, the sorted politics surrounding my exile had become _much_ simpler when they realized there was a veritable legion of super powered females that wanted me to stay in one piece. All in all, things were looking up for me.

I really should have known that wouldn't last.

The quiet moment I had to myself was disturbed by the sound of footsteps rapidly coming towards me. As I turned, I saw Troper!Shirou running at me, saying to himself "Oh Crap! Oh Crap! 100 percent not good!"

I frowned to myself as he slid to a stop in front of me. "Ok, what did you do this time?"

"Why do you automatically assume it's my fault?" I gave him a flat look. "Ok, fine, be that way. However, we do have a slight problem."

"What is it?"

"Well, remember how when my Rin first showed up, and she had that rod that turned her into a Magical Girl?"

I chuckled to myself as I nodded. I know that it wasn't my Rin, but the sight of her in such a ridiculous outfit was something I would treasure till the end of my days.

"The problem starts with the fact that your sister went into the wrong room of the inn looking for you and she ended up riffling through Rin's stuff."

It took me a few seconds to make the connection. I barely felt the glass slip through my numb fingers and hit the floor, spilling its contents everywhere. "Oh god, you don't mean…"

"Unfortunately, yes. Your sister has become the new KaleidoRuby."

I gave an explosive groan as I palmed my face. "Ok, how bad is it?"

"Last I checked, she was hunting down everyone in the city that had called her an 'overcompensating loli' for 'Great Justice'. However," he looked off to the side and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "That's… not the real problem."

"How can that not be the real problem?"

"Well, it seems she somehow accessed the multidimensional features of the Kaleidostick, and managed to summon its counterpart, KaleidoSapphire."

"You're telling she's now some kind of double Magical Girl? A… KaledioRubySapphire?"

"Perhaps. However," he somehow cringed even more than he already was. "That's… not the real problem."

I was about to demand that he get to real damn problem already when I heard Musubi's voice speak up behind me. "Look Shirou-chan! The most wonderful thing has happened!"

"Not now, Musubi." I said without looking at her. I once again addressed Troper!Shirou "What is the real problem already?"

He didn't respond, instead looking past me at Musubi with wide eyes. I looked at him in confusion until I heard from behind me "Now I can make the whole world find love!"

A sudden feeling of dread filled me, and I slowly turned around. Standing behind me was Musubi in her shrine maiden outfit except… with more frills and embroidery. Most notably, her head was adorned with a pair of bear ears, and in her right hand she held a pink rod with a star and wings on top.

Musubi gave a grin thrust her free hand out in a V shaped peace sign. "To find love for everyone in the world! That is the duty of KaleidoLove!"

Through my stupor I heard Troper!Shirou speak up behind me. "The real problem is that Yukari managed to get the two sticks to breed… somehow."

Musubi pounced at me with a cry of "Love!", but before she could land I felt my doppelganger grab the back of my shirt and start dragging me down the hall as fast as he could. Fortunately, I managed to grab my IV stand as I was dragged past it.

"We have to get out of here!" he said. "There's no telling how far it's spread!"

I managed to stumble to my feet and fall in line next to him. "Oh come on. What's The Worst That Could Happen?"

"Really? Did you seriously just say that?"

True enough to narrative causality, the next moment as we rounded the corner, we ran into Akitsu. "Ah…" she said with a blush. "KaleidoSlave is ready for you Master." Akitsu's outfit consisted of chains… and nothing else really. There's no way that outfit could have gotten past the censors on a real Magical Girl show.

We didn't have time to react to the rather inappropriate display however, as a second later the door to Homura room opened and the fire Sekirei stumbled out, falling on the floor. He appeared to be half dress in an elaborate dress of his own, though he was now tangled up in it from his own desperate attempts to remove it. "No!" he screamed "I don't want to be a magical girl! I want to be a man!"

"Nonsense!" a female yet very butch voice cried out from his room. Floating in the doorway was a black and red rod similar to the ones I had already seen thus far. "I have chosen you to become the first KaleidoFutanari! It is you destiny!" The rod drifted back into the room, using some unseen force to drag Homura back with it.

"Noooooooo!" His screams echoed as he was dragged back into the room, his finger digging grooves into the floor as he went.

"There's no saving him! We have to move!" Troper!Shirou cried out. With a sudden movement, he simply kicked through the wall to the left and we jumped into the living room. Unfortunately, in was not unoccupied.

"Look Onii-chan!" It was Kuu-chan in what I could only describe at a dress made out of plants. Thankfully, it was a much more modest affair then what I had seen so far. "Kuu-chan is KaleidoSword! Kuu-chan has swords!" Indeed, her wand, rather than being in the standard rod shape, was a green hilted sword with the star and wings as the cross guard.

Then I paid attention to the last word she said. "Wait, swords?" I look past her and there were several dozen plant themed swords floating behind her. When she began waving her wand around in childish exuberance, the rest followed suit, flying in various direction. Needless to say, Troper!Shirou and I barely made it out with our heads attached to our necks.

In our rush to get out of the Izumo House, we also ended up running into KaleidoTsundere (Tsukiumi), KaleidoEchii (Matsu), and KaleidoSake (Kazehana). The only reason we made it out at all was KaleidoHannya (Miya) decided to punish the rest of the household for the mess they were making and we managed to slip away in the confusion. As we tore down the street, me still carrying my IV stand, shouted "This is completely god damn absurd!"

"No," my counterpart replied. "Absurd is dreaming from the view point of an alternate version of yourself which you just met."

"What?"

"Don't worry about it." Troper!Shirou brushed off. "Well, there's only one course of action." As he said this, he pulled out a small device and pressed a button on it. A beeping noise then came from my waist. Looking down, I saw a similar device attached to my belt, though I had no idea how it got there. Looking back at the man, I saw he had a grin on his face as he said "We're getting the team back together."

* * *

"So, that's the current situation." Troper!Shirou said, addressing my other 3 counterparts. It was fortunate for us that they had yet to return to their dimensions as we need all the help we could get. At the moment, the 5 of us were hiding out in one of my several safe houses I had scattered throughout Shin Tokyo. "The Kaleidosticks have been reproducing at an accelerated rate. So far their 'children' have been going after the Sekirei, and I think it's safe to say that at this point, all 108 have been transformed. In my opinion, it's only a matter of time before they start to spread to the general populous. "

"What the worst case scenario?" asked KoS!Shirou.

"The entire planet will be consumed in sparkles." We all simultaneously shuttered at the thought. He continued. "As I'm sure you're all aware, the 5 of us are the only ones in the city manly enough to fight the onslaught of Magical Girls. We don't have time for reinforcements, so we have to stop it now."

"But how?" EC!Shirou asked. "I know that this could turn into a global threat, but the Sekirei are innocent. I don't want to hurt them."

Before Archer could give his undoubtedly grim opinion, Troper!Shirou spoke up. "Don't worry; I've dealt with this sort of problem with Rin before, if never on this scale. Now, pay attention, because this is tricky as hell and I want to do it as few times as possible." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He then put out his hand and incanted "Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction Sabermorphic Personification Soul Cutting Sword."

The sword that appeared in his hand bore a passing resemblance to Excalibur, except this it was, well, cute. It looked like a cartoon version of the blade, but it such a way to highlight how ridiculous it was. The other major difference was found in the blade itself, which was intermittently filled with holes. The holes themselves seemed to contain various kinds of equipment, like jackhammers and explosives.

"This is the weapon that you will be using. It won't do any physical harm the Sekirei, but it will force them to realize all of the problems and flaws that are inherent with Magical Girls. The emotional backlash will separate them from their respective Kaleidosticks. Now you have to be quick to bag them," Troper!Shirou said, handing us each a Bag of Holding. "Otherwise the stick might wise up and turn it into a Reconstruction. At that point they'll be unstoppable." He sighed as he sheathed his own copy of the blade. "Unfortunately, I can't mass produce swords like you four can, so you'll be doing most of the heavy lifting. I'll help out when I can, but I have some… contingencies I have to look into."

He eyed us each in turn. "Everyone know what they have to do?" We all nodded. "Right. Good hunting."

* * *

***One A-Team style suit-up montage later***

* * *

Archer stealthed down the street, his oversized bow out and an anti-Magical Girl sword at the ready. After the group had split apart to cover more ground, he adopted the practical tactic using stealth and long range sniper shots to take down his targets. So far he had managed to snag, bag and tag over two dozen Kaleidosticks. So far only one of the magical girls had managed to evade his attacks. He had seen the black and grey specter several times, but she always darted out of view before he could get a bead.

He rounded a corner and spotted another Sekirei in an overly frilly garb standing next to a mailbox. He drew his bow back and lined up a shot. Getting a good look at her, Archer noticed that the Sekirei seemed to be hitting the base of the mailbox with her wand. Drawing his gaze downward, he saw that the reason for this was that she was chained to it by her leg.

_That's odd,_ he thought. _Who could have chained her up like that? And more importantly, why-_

That was as far as he got before the sun went behind the clouds and he noticed the wicked grin behind the large window to his left that was previously obscured by the glare. He turned his head and saw Karasuba, clad in black, grey and numerous sharp objects, now fully embracing her role as KaleidoMurder.

He just managed to whisper to himself "Clever girl…" before she crashed through the window and pounced on him.

* * *

As he dodged through his own personal bullet hell, KoS!Shirou thought of how things had snowballed into his current situation. It started with him taking down the first magical girl, and then another one appearing immediately after. He defeated that one, but as her body fell next to the first one, a third on showed up. Then another. Then another. Then another.

It was now at the point where he was standing on a small hill of unconscious Sekirei, an Anti-Magical Girl sword sticking up out of each of them. _I swear,_ he thought to himself as he added another magical girl to the pile. _if this is my Hill of Swords, I will never be able to look Athuria in the eyes when I see her. I hope my counter parts are doing better than I am..._

* * *

EC!Shirou wished he could say that this was the first time he had been tied up on an alter made of outdated encyclopedias about to be scarified to a dark librarian god. He really did.

"Look," he said, looking away from his bindings and at the Sekirei that managed to get the jump on him. "I'm not saying it's bad, I just personally prefer alphabetical ordering to the dewy decimal system."

"Heresy!" KaleidoLibrarian screamed, and she continued on with her dark chanting.

EC!Shirou sighed to himself. He really should know by now that talking never worked in these kinds of situation. However, this wasn't nearly the worst bind he had been in. Hell, this Sekirei wasn't even close to the first femme fatal that held him at their 'mercy'. In fact, he had developed a standard operating procedure for just such an occasion. With a small grin on his face, began to incant "**I am the boner of my sword**…"

* * *

"Oh god! I'll never have time for a personal life!" This was the Sekirei's final cry as I ran her though with the trope crafted sword. She collapsed onto the ground, her elaborate dress fading back to a normal, only slightly less ridiculous outfit. I scooped up her Kaleidostick and threw it in my bag, sighing as I did so. I was going to have a long talk with my sister the next time I saw her.

The brief moment of peace I had earned was interrupted by a low rumbling sound. Turning around, the cause of this noise turned out to be a 15 foot tall orange rolling down the street. On top the nonsensically large fruit was Troper!Shirou back-running furiously while holding a small toddler under each arm.

You know, I really should just stop being surprised by anything at this point.

I watched numbly as the orange crashed into the wall next to me. Jumping off, he ran towards me and all but threw the children at me. "The spoons are after me!" he said. "I need you and the kids to hide in this orange. I'm going to go build a lamppost out of cinnamon buns, that should by us some time." And with that he took off down the street.

I didn't have long to think about that as, from the direction the orange originally came from, several giant, flying spoons with mouths full of serrated teeth came barreling after him. On top of one of them, there was a dessert themed Magical Girl, screaming "How dare you insult KaleidoPastry with fruit!"

In a world where that could happen, nothing mattered anymore.

* * *

A good deal later, all of us except Troper!Shirou regrouped in front of MBI Headquarters. We all looked a bit worse for wear, but we had come out in one piece. Archer was finishing counting our combined Kaleidostick total.

"106… 107… 108. That's all of them."

"All except the original two." EC!Shirou pointed out. "Once we bag Yukari, we can put an end to this mess."

"There's a slight problem with that." We turned around and saw Troper!Shirou walking towards us, my sister's unconscious body slung over his shoulder.

I hustled over to him, taking Yukari's body and setting it on a bench. "What problem? Didn't you grab the Kaleidosticks when you knocked her out?"

"I found her like this. The sticks were nowhere to be found."

"What? How-" That's as far as I got before Hiroto Minaka's face appeared on the giant screen attached to the MBI building.

"Ahahaha! You may have defeated all of the Mooks, but now you face the Final Boss!"

I frowned in confusion at that statement. "What the hell are you talking ab-" I froze mid-sentence as a realization born of horror filled my body. _Oh god, he wouldn't…_

But as the camera panned out to show the rest of his body, my denial was in vain, because yes, _of course_ he would.

Hiroto Minaka, President of MBI and mastermind behind the failed Sekirei Plan, was wearing a frilly, embroidered, blue and red dress that barely came down to mid thigh. He had stockings, long fingerless gloves, and a blue and red rod griped in each hand.

Minaka had become a Magical Girl.

"Oh god! My eyes!" KoS!Shirou screamed as he covered his face with his hands.

Archer was deathly pale. "It's more horrible then I could have possibly imagined!"

EC!Shirou settled for simply emptying the contents of his stomach.

I myself was halfway to passed out from the shear wrongness of the imagery when I heard Troper!Shirou's unsteady voice speak up. "S-So what? We just carved our way through a small army of Magical Girls. You think we can't handle some middle aged man in a dress?"

"You fool! I've been preparing for this possibility for years! And now that I finally have a sufficient power source, I shall use my Great Chariot to usher in the New Age of the Gods! Begin activation sequence!"

The screen turned off and the ground began to shake. I grabbed Yukari and we all ran away from the MBI building, which was starting to fall apart. As I turned back to look, I saw the building wasn't collapsing, it was splitting open in half to allow something out that was rising up from a great shaft underneath the building.

It was an honest to god mecha, though it was much more, err, effeminate than I was used to. The limbs were quite thin, and so was the waist. It became wider at the shoulders, and even more so at the hips. However, the weirdest part was a toss up between the high-heeled feet and the built in tri-corner hat with a colossal white feather in it.

The mecha strode out of the building. With my Reinforced eyes, I could see Minaka in a sphere in the titan's chest. "Ahahahaha!" He laughed manically and he made absurd poses. "Now! Star Wand: Rubis!" The mecha struck its chest with its right fist, and pulled from it a replica of KaleidoRuby mad out of red energy. "Star Wand: Saphir!" It repeated the motion with its left hand and a blue energy replica of KaleidoSapphire formed. "Behold! You came here expecting a man, but you have found instead a god!"

For a long moment, the 5 of us stared up at the Magical Monstrosity in silence. Then, Troper!Shirou summed it up best: "We're Gonna Need More Trope."

"You have to be kidding me!" I yelled, feeling what little sanity I had left slipping away. "What the hell are we going to do now? We can't take that thing down!" I said pointing at it. "It's not like we have our own giant robot!"

I was greeted by silence behind me, and when I turned around, I saw that my Troperiffic counterpart had an ear-to-ear sh*t eating grin on his face. There was a moment before it clicked in my head.

"No."

"Yes."

"_No._"

"_Yes_"

"No no no no no no no no no no-"

"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssss! Contingency plan Gamma Alpha Rho! Emergency Teleport!" With that exclamation, he pressed a button on the same device earlier, and with a familiar beeping coming from my waist (seriously, where did that thing come from? And why didn't I take it off?), the world disappeared in a flash of light. When I could see again, I found myself inside of a cockpit of some sort. There were a number of blinking lights and toggles of which I had no idea what they did.

A series of screens lit up in front of me, and I saw my 4 doppelgangers on one of each of them. "Right, is everyone in their respective mecha?" Troper!Shirou asked.

"We each have our own mecha?"

"Yep! And you know what that means!"

"Umm… what?"

His grin became fierce. "Gattai!"

"…What."

"Team! Move out! Combining Mecha! Theme Music Power-Up!"

At this point I felt the machine beneath me hum to life, and my main view monitor showed that the building I was apparently encased in folding open. Also, over the speakers, a heavy rock tune with rapid guitar notes began to play.

"**Theeeeeeeey've got, a magic and a force that you've never seen before!**"

Once my mecha cleared the building, I was able to see that it was in the shape of a wolf. As it ran down the street, I saw a similarly sized lion mecha running down the street parallel to mine through the buildings.

"**Theeeeeeeey've got, the ability to make countless amounts of swords!**"

Looking ahead, I could see where the streets merged. At that point, there was a tiger mecha folding into a pair of legs, and a bear mecha was folding into a boxy shape on top of it to form a torso.

"**Noooooooo one, can ever take them down…**"

Just as I caught a glimpse of an eagle mecha flying towards the configuration, the lion mecha as well as my own jumped through the air, twisted themselves into arm-like shapes and attached to the torso.

"**The magic lies on their sieieieieide**!"

My cockpit suddenly shifted, and I felt it sliding up the up the arm. I felt a thump as the eagle mecha attached to become the head, and all five of us entered the bridge simultaneously.

"**Go go Shirou Rangers**!"

"**Go go Shirou Rangers!**"

"**Go go Shirou Rangers! You Might Manly Shirou Rangers!**"

Our mecha now complete, it stood opposite Minaka's monstrosity holding a giant sized copy of the Anti-Magical Girl Sword. We sat on the bridge that resembled every combined mecha bridge from every super sentai show I've ever seen. The five of us were lined up at a row of consoles, which of course that crazy bastard of a counterpart was at the center of. He was standing up with his foot on the console, his longcoat billowing in the breeze created by the excessively powerful air conditioner. Knowing him, he probably installed that on purpose.

"Ha! The tables have now turned!" he said is a loud, authoritative voice. "Now we shall commence our Epic Final Battle of Epicness! It may take hours or even days, but-"

"No! Absolutely not!" The other four looked at me in surprise, but I didn't care. I had had enough of this madness. "There is a big red button right next to your foot that says 'Ultimate Attack'! Just use it so we can go home and be done with this craziness!"

"But-"

"No."

"You can't-"

"Don't care."

Troper!Shirou rolled his eyes. "Fine. But I still get to do my In The Name Of The Moon Speech."

"Whatever! Just Do it!"

He sighed, lifted up his foot, and brought it down on the button "Alright! This is it! Ultimate Attack!" Our mecha lifted up its sword in salute which began to glow. "This sword of ours is shining bright! Its tropes are calling out for your defeat! Take this! Our love, our anger, and all of our sorrow!"

"MAGICAL!"

The mecha brought the sword above its head.

"DECONSTRUCTION!"

The sword began its arc downward.

"EXCALABUR!"

A blast of light issued forth from the blade, decimating all in its path. When it hit Minaka's mecha, there were several explosions and showers of sparks. As it began to topple over, lightning arch up and down it's body, and I could just hear Minaka's cries of "What do you mean I'm too old to be a Magical Girl? NOOOOOOOOO!"

And then, all was still. Well, except for the numerous fires and secondary explosions throughout the city that our attack had caused.

"Yes!" Troper!Shirou exalted. "Once again, the day is saved by Shirou Emiya, and everyone has a Happy Ending!"

"Half the city's on fire!" I screamed at him.

He decided to ignore me. "Yep, a Happy Ending for everyone!"

I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and then jumped on top of him, strangling him as we both fell to the floor.


	7. Chapter 4: Rin is Frustrated

While at this point I objectively knew that the woman in front of me was not my former lover from England and was most likely Troper's version of Rin, It was still hard for me not to feel both happiness and heartache at seeing her. Granted, the feeling was tempered by the barely restrained humor I was feeling as she looked like she had just walked out of a children's anime, but it was still there. As my brain began to sluggishly turn itself back on from the shock of seeing her, part of it idly wondered if other people went through the kind of troubles I had in their relationships: boy meets heroic spirit, boy loves heroic spirit, boy loses heroic spirit, boy meets magus, boy loves magus, heroic spirit comes back, magus makes both spirit and boy part of her harem, boy loses both magus and heroic spirit due to amoral organization, boy accidentally marries several aliens, boy meets alternate dimensional counterpart of said magus. It seemed unlikely.

However, my musings were cut short when I finally remembered that there was irate Magical Girl in front of me waving a stick at my face. "Guh… I'm not the Shirou you're looking for."

"Oh don't you try that crap with me!" She said. "As far as I'm concerned, I…" she trailed off and blinked in confusion. She then leaned forward, her eyes narrowing as she studied me intently. "Wait, your right, you're not my Shirou. Your aura is slightly off…" Rin then turned her angry glare away from me to the wand she was holding. "You stupid piece of junk! You tracked the wrong one! We're probably not even in the right universe!"

Before I could correct her and tell her about Troper, I was surprised to hear the wand speak up on its own behalf. "Bah! How dare you question my competence! Of course we're in the right universe! In fact, we're within a few dozen feet of him. It's not my fault you mistook the native Shirou for your own."

"Oh come on!" Rin exclaimed "Don't you know how improbable it would be that he would just happen to be in the same area as…" she again trailed off mid-sentence and blinked. This was followed by her palming her face and groaning. "It's Shirou we're talking about. _Of course_ something like this would happen against all laws of probability."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure Zelretch set things up so that the two of us would meet." I said as I finally managed to get a word in edgewise.

She looked at me in surprise. "Wait, you actually know what I'm talking about?" I nodded. "And you know who Zelretch is?" I nodded again. "And you know where my Shirou is?" I nodded a third time, and she breathed out a sigh of relief. "Thank the Root. That will save so much time. Now tell me where he is so I can get this damn costume off."

"He's staying with me in the inn." I said, motioning behind myself as best I could with my hands full of groceries. "Here, I'll show you." As we began walking down the path towards the house, a thought occurred to me. "Hey, why do you need his help to get your costume off? And while we're on the topic, why are you-"

"None of your damn business!" She shouted at me, her face turning bright red.

As I knew better then to laugh at any version of Rin that was embarrassed, I took care to hide my chuckles as we walked into the Izumo House. "I'm home! Troper! I found your Rin!" I called out. I heard a great deal of ruckus coming from the kitchen, so the two of us made our way there. Just as we entered the kitchen, I suddenly thought _Wait, didn't Troper say something about almost always being fou__nd in a compromising situation every time Rin found him?_ I was about to suggest that Rin wait in the hall, but by then it was too late because she laid eyes on...

We both stopped near the doorway, dumbstruck at the utterly bizarre and rather inappropriate sight in front of us. Troper, Musubi, Matsu, Tsukiumi, and Kusano were all piled up on the kitchen table, wrapped in thick vines that were likely of Kuu-chan's make. This would have been strange enough, but the way they were stacked made it so Troper was sandwiched between Musubi and Matsu, his head almost completely obscured by their cleavage, with Tsukiumi on top of Mastu and Kuu-chan on top of everyone.

"Mmmphmphpmmph!" he exclaimed as squirmed about, trying to get his face out of Musubi's ample bosom.

My shock was broken by an old yet familiar sense of doom. Looking to my side, I found that Rin had suddenly become far more terrifying-looking then should rightfully be allowed in such an outfit. "Shir-ou!" she slowly ground out.

Troper stopped squirming for a moment, frozen like a small animal that had just heard roar of a predator. He then managed to angle his head so that he could see us. "Mmm!" His mouth was still buried in bosom, so he couldn't say anything coherent. His eyes darted around for a second before looking back at Rin. "Mh Mph Mpph Mh Mphph Mphh!"

However, I didn't words to understand what he just said.

"And what is it supposed to look like?" It seems Rin had been around him long enough to get his general meaning too. Although, if this had happened as often as Troper implied, the two of them could probably predict each other's responses at this point.

"Mmmm… Mm mphmpmph?"

She crossed her arms and glared at him. "I don't believe you."

He rolled his eyes and gave Rin a look. "Mmphmh? Mph mmmh mrph mmmm mrh mmphph mm mp mphm mp mphph? Mmmrph mm mumps mrphmm mppmm mm mrphmm?"

She strode over to the entangled pile of people, shaking the wand at Troper. "That doesn't mean it's not what it looks like this time… whatever that may be. This doesn't happen to normal people, you know. By the Root, with all the madness you've caused since I've met you, I've never ended up like this."

Troper arched an eyebrow at this. "Mm? Mrph mmphh mrmm mmmm mp mph mmpph mrrm mmh mphph mpmph mphmrphm mmmmrph mphrmm?"

At this, Rin began blushing a luminescent red. She stuttered "Ho-how was I suppose to know that they could switch genders?" Finding herself backed into a corner, it was at this point Rin decided to fall back on the classic tsundere response: physical violence. With a growl of frustration, she began belting him in the head with her wand, yelling "Stupid Shirou! You leave me alone for over month, make me use this stupid stick to find you, and I end up finding you head first in-between some cow-chested bimbos? Aaaargh!" I don't think she was actually hurting him though, as the noise the wand made when it hit him sounded an awful lot like a squeaky mallet. He just looked more annoyed than anything else.

"Ara ara, what's all this ruckus?" talking my eyes away from the ensuing madness, I turned around and saw Miya entering the kitchen, her eyes opening from their normally crinkled state in bemusement.

I was about to try to explain the situation involving my alternate dimension counterpart, his Magical Girl lover currently hitting him in the face with her wand, the mass of vines and the busty alien females, when I stopped and said. "You know what? I'm done for today. I'm going to bed." And with that I walked out of the kitchen to my room, hoping that when I woke up things would make sense again.

Just before I was out of earshot, I managed to hear Miya say "It seems I must remind you that violence and lewd acts are forbidden Izumo House…" along with the terrified screams of everyone else left in the kitchen.

* * *

As hard as I tried, I couldn't get to sleep. I'm just not the kind of person who can take naps whenever he wants when he has a schedule he's been following for several weeks. Sure, I could force my body to do what I wanted in a pinch, but I really didn't feel like forcing myself unconscious just to get away from the absurdity in the kitchen. At some point Akitsu came in to join me, probably to escape the madness herself. We ended up laying on the futon for an hour; enjoying one of the few quite moments life afforded me these days.

I got up once I assumed a reasonable amount of time had passed for everything to die down, and the ice Sekirei and I walked into the hallway. By the smell of things, dinner was well underway, if not already done. I began to walk down the hall to investigate this, but I stopped near Troper's room when I heard voices. It sounded like Troper and Rin.

I'm not sure why I did it, but I Reinforced my hearing to listen in. Considering how mad I had been at Matsu for prying into my past, it was pretty hypocritical for me to start ease dropping on my counterpart's most likely private conversation. I would try to justify it to myself later, part of me telling myself that I was making sure that they really were who they said they were. Another part of me said that I was just being immensely curious. A third part which I shut away quickly said that I just wanted to hear Rin's voice again.

"…Annnnnd done." I heard Troper say after my hearing was enhanced. "All the locks on the Kaleidostick are back in place." A sigh. "You really used it so soon? I think this is the fastest you've ever found me."

I heard a familiar sounding huff. "Since coming to a new dimension, yes. But Zeltretch been throwing you around the multiverse nearly non-stop. I haven't had certain… needs met for over a month." I could guess what needs she was referring to.

"Well, as much I would like to help in that regard, you've met the landlady. She won't stand for anything of the sort happening under her roof."

"Well, sure, I wouldn't want… whatever the hell happened in the kitchen to happen again either, but-"

Troper interrupted her "No, I mean ANYthing of the sort. There are about five women living here with rather active libidos who want in my counterpart's pants, but as far as I know his chastity remains intact in no small part thanks to her." I hadn't told him how I had winged Akistu as I didn't think it necessary to reveal that particular bit of information, but otherwise he was fairly accurate.

"What?" she squawked in surprise. "W-well, we'll just stay somewhere else tonight!"

"Do you have any legal tender on you?" Troper asked. I could almost hear Rin's shoulders slump. "That's what I thought."

"That settles it." She said, her voice now resolute. "We're leaving this universe tonight!"

There was a brief pause before Troper spoke up. "Actually… I was thinking we should stay for a bit."

"Eh? Why?"

"Well, this dimension's Shirou is in a bit of trouble, and I was thinking-"

"No."

Rin's interruption was so soft I almost didn't hear it. "What?" I heard Troper say in surprise.

"I. Said. NO!" she said at much louder volume. Her tone had shifted as well, from her previous one of annoyance to outright anger. "Root damn it, Shirou! You always do this! You always get involved when you should just move on and let someone deal with their own problems!"

Troper's voice hardened a bit "I can't just let someone in trouble suffer. You should know that by now."

"Of course I know that! That's one of the reasons I love you, stupid!" I was a bit thrown off by this angry declaration of love, but I didn't have time to think about it. "But, you can't keep doing this! We always run into someone needs your help, and you always nearly kill yourself giving it to them!"

"We live dangerous lives Rin. We both knew the risks when we accepted Zelretch offer."

"Yes, but you know damn well that playing savoir across the multiverse wasn't the reason we accepted it! We have our own problems to take care off!"

"Everyone deserves a Happy Ending."

"What about Saber's happy ending?" I was so surprised by this I almost didn't notice that tone had become upset. "I'm not the only one who needs you. She's waiting for us. She doesn't know it, but she's waiting for us. And I can't do this without you…" I heard a sniffle and a small whimper. "Damn it, I miss her so much…"

Troper's voice became comforting. "So do I. We'll find her Rin. I swear we'll find her." The sounds come from the room were just unintelligible whispers after that.

I stepped away from the door, felling somewhat ashamed of listening in on such a moment. As I turned back toward the kitchen, I made a note to myself to see if I could get Matsu to delete the recording from the camera's undoubtedly hidden in their room. My progress was blocked by Miya however, who had apparently snuck up behind me while I was listening to the conversation. "Ah, Emiya-kun, you should know better than to listen to a conversation between two lovers." She chastised, her eyes narrowing.

"Sorry Miya." I said, rubbing the back of my head sheepishly. "I… was just trying to make sure they were alight." Her continued stare indicated that she didn't believe my weak excuse one bit, so I tried changing the subject. "So, is dinner ready?"

Miya relaxed her gaze a bit. "Yes. After the… incident in the kitchen, I had Troper-kun send his companion to his room while he helped me get started. It wasn't until about 30 minutes later that I sent him away. I was just coming to tell them that everything was ready, though it seems that they may need some more time to themselves."

I was about to thank Miya for her consideration when I heard a moan from Rin coming from Troper's room. It was easy to tell that it wasn't a moan caused by exhaustion or frustration.

Miya eyes narrowed again, this time at the door. "On the other hand it would be a shame if dinner got cold…" With that she brushed passed me and opened the door. I couldn't see into the room from where I was in the hallway, but I did hear a pair of startled screams ring out. "Ara ara, what's this?" With that, darkness began to gather around the landlady.

Just before the hannya mask formed, I heard "Ah…" Turning to Akitsu, it was apparent that she had a clear view of the room from where she was standing and she was looking in with great curiosity. "I liked that."


	8. Chapter 5: Exposition Harder

"So, let me get this straight," Homura said as he cradled his forehead in his hand. "You're the alternate dimensional counterpart to Shirou's former lover from England, fellow apprentice with Troper to this nigh-immortal sorcerer I keep hearing about, and you're a magus that sometimes dresses like a magical girl?"

"I'm also incredibly good looking, too." Rin replied coolly, her eyes narrowing at that last comment. Apparently she had picked up a mannerism or two from Troper.

I sighed as Homura's eyebrow twitched. In a scene that was startlingly similar to yesterday's dinner, the whole household was gathered around the dinner table to bear witness to the latest crazy development in our lives, which today was the arrival of Troper's Rin. Given we knew most of the story from Troper already, we were still in the middle of dinner when Matsu brought up the part of her arrival that she found most interesting.

"So, why were you dressed up like that anyway?"the brain Sekirei asked. Her glasses glinted as an idea came to her. "Oh! I know! Is it maybe because Troper-tan is into that kind of thing, and Rin-tan had something special in mind after being apart for so long…"

Rin began to blush furiously. "Wh-what? No! I would never be dressed like that for something so perverse!"

"The short answer is that that the wand she was carrying forced her to wear it." Troper interrupted, trying to head off the conversation before things became more heated. It was worth noting that his cheeks had become somewhat red at the 'something special in mind' comment, though. "That was the short cut I was talking about last night. It's known as the Kaleidostick, and as one of Zelretch's creations, its capable searching through the multiverse very quickly and efficiently. Rin can use it to… triangulate my position. Well, no that's completely wrong as the infinite sea of possibilities isn't really compatible with Euclidian geometry, but it's a convent lie you can understand"

"I… see" I said, not trying to think about it too hard. "But still, why does it force her to wear it? And why are you the only one that can remove the cloths?"

Troper ignored the snickers from Matsu. "The Kaledostick is sentient and has a rather… unfortunate sense of humor. As for why I'm the only one who can remove it, well, let's just say that it tried to make me a Magical Girl. Once" He gave a predatory grin. "It knows better now."

"Whoa, scary bro…" Uzume said, leaning away from Troper a bit. She turned to Rin. "So, you're a magus too right? Can you do the same stuff he can?"

She scoffed a bit at this "No. I practice a far more traditional and logical form of magic than Shirou. He's the only person I know that's crazy enough to turn something like tropes into a form of magic."

"Oji-chan has trope swords!" Kuu-chan added enthusiastically, apparently deciding that my slightly older counterpart was something akin to a distant uncle.

"Well, technically they're sword tropes, but yes." Troper turned to Rin. "By the way, I'm going by the name Troper while I'm here to prevent confusion." He said, gesturing to me as he did so.

She snorted at this. "Of course you are. I bet you've already started making a page in your head."

He looked off to the side. "Maybe."

"There's no maybe about it. I've know you for years. Root, I could probably guess half the content myself from what I've heard so far. I'm guessing, harem antics, badass fight scenes, and hilarity ensues just for starters."

"Yes, though I wasn't about bring it up. The players don't like to be reminded of the Fourth Wall, after all."

"Page? And what a about a fourth wall?" Musubi asked, her head tilted to the side in confusion.

"I believe he's referring to the imaginary wall that separates the actors on a stage from the audience." Homura said, though his eyes narrowed at Troper a bit. "In simpler terms, it's what separates 'fiction' from the 'real world', and I must say, I don't like the implication that you're making about us."

"What implication?" Tsukimui asked, always ready to respond to any perceived insult.

"The implication that you're all just fictional character and this is just a story." Troper said with a sigh. "But I didn't mean it as insult. In fact, I'm just as fictitious as you are."

Rin gave an exasperated sigh. "Oh no, not this again. You know a think that's a load of crap."

Troper gave her a wiry grin. "And yet you've never been able to say my logic is faulty in the slightest." She just grumbled at this and he continued. "Anyway, it's like this: Given the nature of the multiverse, everything that can possibly happen will happen. This includes works of fiction: anything that can be imagined and written about, will be imagined and written about."

"What's your point?" Homura asked, his eye's still narrowed.

"If every story is being written, then someone, somewhere in the multiverse is writing your story." As one, the table blinked in surprise at this revelation. "To them, you are a fictional character. What that means is the barrier that separates the dimensions from each other is in fact the Fourth Wall."

"So you're saying nothing's real, Troper-kun? That nothing really matters?" Miya asked.

"Not at all. Everyone has a story, and every last one of them matters. It just so happens that each one has an author to go with it."

"Yes, but that's mostly a coincidence." Rin said, clearly believing that she was very real and not at all a character in some story. "So what if it just so happens that someone made up a story about you and by pure chance got all the details right? It doesn't mean anything."

Troper gave a shrug. "Perhaps. But if you know what kind of story you're in, you have a basic idea of how this will turn out, and I can tell you Genre Savvy has saved my life more times than I can count."

"Oh? And what genre is your story Troper-kun?" The landlady gave him an inquisitive look.

Troper gave a satisfied smile as he said "My story is an erotic comedy."

Rin punched him lightly in the side of the head "How many times have I told you not to say that, stupid? I refuse to believe that anything I'm a part of could be labeled as something as sordid as that."

Troper rubbed the side of his head. "Ok, ok, that's the genre I wish my story was. In reality, is more complicated than that. It tends to change depending on the people and circumstances around me."

"So… it's just like real life." I said, realizing that to him, real life and fiction were one and the same.

"Now you're getting it."

I was about to ask something else when I heard the door open. "_Heeee~ey_! Sorry I'm late for dinner Onii-chan! Shiina and I lost track of time patrolling the city!"

I barely stopped from shouting a curse. _Shit!_ I thought. _With everything that's been going on I forgot it was Saturday!_That was the day Yukari would show up for dinner at the Izumo House. While she had heard enough about my past to know I had been involved in some dangerous things, she still didn't know about magic, and I wanted to keep it that way. However, that would be difficult with my alternate dimension counterpart sitting across from me.

I turned back towards him to tell him to hide, but when I looked in his direction, he had disappeared. Rin, who had been sitting right next to him, was blinking in surprise at the sudden vacant space next to her.

Before I could ponder this too much, my sister came into the dining room with her Sekirei. Before she could say anything, Kuu-chan quickly got up and rushed over to Shiina. "Shii-chan! Come sit next to me!" grabbing his hand, she pulled him back to where she was sitting and plopped him down right next to her.

"Hey!" Yukari began. "Why do you always get to-" she cut herself off when she noticed Rin. "Oh, did you get another Sekirei, Onii-chan? Her breasts aren't very big though…"

Rin sputtered at this "You-you're one talk, pancake chest!"

"Hey! They're not that small!" Yukari returned, her arms folding protectively across her chest. "I bet you're not nearly as good as Shirou's other Sekirei!"

"I'm not a Sekirei! I'm-"

"An old friend from Fuyuki City!" I quickly interjected before Rin said too much. "Her name is… Sakura!" I blurted out the first name I could think of. It would be really bad if my sister learned that this was Rin. Well, technically it wasn't the Rin that I had loved, but that was something else I didn't want to explain.

Rin looked at me briefly in confusion. I hadn't gotten around to telling her about what had happened at the Clock Tower, and I don't think Troper had given her too many details yet, so it was probable she didn't know about how my Rin and I were forced to break up. Even if she did, she most certainly wouldn't know my sister's outlook on my former lover who worked for the organization that had sent me into hiding. Fortunately, Rin decided to play along. "Yes, my name is Sakura Matou. I used to go to high school with Shirou."

"Really?" Yukari asked, suddenly very interested in a possible source of information about my past. Forgetting about Shiina, she hurried and sat herself down in Troper's vacant seat, looking at Rin with wide eyes. "Oh my god, what was he like? Was he as awesome back then as he is now? Was he always surrounded by women? Did he really participate in a brutal battle that was caused by an evil, shadowy organization?"

"Eh?" Rin said in surprise. She turned to me. "Isn't that last bit supposed to be kept a secret?" I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly, not wanting to recall the night that bit of information that was pried out of me.

Yukari let out a noise that can only be defined as a 'squee' and started to babble. "ohmygosh ohmygosh it really is true! Shirou really did fight in a bunch of battles and fought an evil orginzation and then joined the evil organization and then went to England with Rin and Saber and-" she went on like this for quite some time, extrapolating my past as she went. I really wished she didn't start doing that with Rin and Saber though. While her opinion of them had increased since I revealed the circumstances of our break up, her feeling on the mater were still colored by how much leaving them hurt me, and it easier to put a face on two women than a shadow organization when it came to blame. This resulted in her saying a few less-than-complementary comments about them to Rin, her eyebrow twitching furiously as Yukari did so.

Partway through the rant I suddenly thought to myself _Who is she? Does she have blue hair!_ I blinked in surprise at this. _What the… why did I suddenly think that? You didn't, I did, now does she have blue hair? Wait, I did? No I didn't! What the hell's going on here? Damn it, this would be a lot easier if we didn't have the same mental voice. What mental voice? What the hell am I thinking about? Oh for the love of… this is Troper and I'm using __Telepathy__!_

My mind was blank for a second before I finally realized that something shaking was touching my foot. Looking beneath the table, I saw Troper huddled into a ball near my legs his hand on my foot. I then caught on to why my thoughts had sounded so disjoined. _You can use __Telepathy__?_ I thought at him.

_Not very well, now answer my damn question! Who is she and does she have blue hair?_

I frowned at him. _She's my sister and no, she doesn't have blue hair. Why would you ask that? You almost sound like you're scared of her._

With this thought, I felt his hand stop shaking and mentally heard a sigh of relief. _Oh thank god, I thought she had found me. Sorry about that, it's just that there's this… girl I met in my travels that I'd rather not met again._

I blinked at this. _By the sound of it, she seems something like The Blue._

_Oh__,__ I would__n't__ say that_ he thought back. _I like her a lot __actually. She was__ almost like pure __Crazy Awesome__ distilled into human form. It's just that she got a little too friendly, and, well…_ I'm not sure how, but I could feel Troper cringe. _Let's just say I can__ never look at cucumbers in__ quite the same way ever again._

It may have been the mental connection, but this caused a chill to go down my spine.


	9. A Crack in Tropes: The Stupid Zone

Homura sat in the dining room of the Izumo House, reading and scratching his chest a little more nervously than usual. He was doing his best not to think about the… indignities he had to suffer at the whims of that damn stick which dressed him up like a pre-teen girl a few days ago when Matsu came into the room with her tablet, muttering to herself as she poured over something.

"Stupid… stupid…poorly written…no sense of causality… stupid… ok, that one's kinda hot…"

Homura sighed and turned to her. "What are you muttering about?" he asked, trying to latch onto something else that would take his mind off incredibly frilly mini-skirts.

"It just doesn't make any sense!" Matsu exclaimed. When Homura looked at her in confusion she continued. "Remember how Troper!Shirou-tan said that anything that could be written was possible in the mutiverse?" He nodded at her paraphrasing, idly wondering how she managed to pronounce the exclamation point. "Well, what about stories that are incredibly stupid? Have you seen some of the fanfiction on the internet?"

Most of Homura's knowledge resided in history and literature, but he did have a cursory awareness of the culture of the internet and the general notion that fan made stories of legitimate works of fictions tend to come out worse for wear. Even then, he didn't need to know about fanfiction to know what she was getting at: there was plenty of published literature on this planet that was terrible all on its own and stretched the idea that it could happen in any reality. "Maybe he was just exaggerating. It's possible that he doesn't know just how bad some people's writing is. What if he doesn't even know about fanfiction?"

Matsu gave him a look "Troper!Shirou-tan? Please, he practically breaths fiction, there's no way he hasn't seen the worst of it. And yet," she said, tapping her chin with her finger and looking thoughtfully into the distance. "He seemed absolutely certain when he said that every story has a universe." She stopped tapping her chin and raised her fist into to air with a resolute look on her face. "We must get to the bottom of this! And I have a plan!"

Homura, feeling a sudden sense of dread that had come to accompany anyone in the household saying that they have some sort of plan, squeaked out "Please tell me it's just asking him about it directly."

"No, Shirou-tan is making him rebuild the half of the city he destroyed, so he'll be busy. Besides," Mastu said with a scary shiny gleam in her glasses, "With Troper-tan out of the way, I know just who to talk to…"

* * *

"Oh god no! Anything but that!" Homura yelled as he hid behind the doorway to Troper!Shirou's room.

"Oh quit being such a baby." Matsu chided as she turned away from the diagram on the floor. "It's not even the same one that made you wear the dress." She was referring of course to the object floating in the center of the diagram, the red rod known as the Kaleidostick. As it turned out, her plan was to ask the sentient magical object about the logic behind the mutiverse having highly improbable worlds made of stupid. Which, considering the chaos that was caused the last time it was free, was exactly what Homura felt her current plan was made out of. Nevertheless, she still intended to do so, and was currently working to remove the magical locks that Troper!Shirou had put on it. The stick could still talk even with the limiters in place, and had promised Matsu to tell her what she wanted to know if she freed it. Since she didn't have magic, this was being done through a combination of runes, magic diagrams, and a lot of raw power, which is why the rest of Shirou's flock was also in the room in order to help out. Homura had no idea why she thought this would work, but he nevertheless didn't want to risk the possibility that it did.

"I don't care which one it is, you shouldn't be letting that thing loose!"

"Sir, you wound me." The Kaliedostick spoke up for itself with a light tenor voice. "I assure you that I have nothing but the most noble of intentions to all of you."

"You see, its fine." Matsu said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Besides…"

Homura's finely honed sense of doom began to tingle. "No…"

"After all…"

"Don't you dare say it!"

"What's the worst that could happen?"

Homura began pulling at his hair in frustration. "Grrahh! Why do you people keep saying that?" Sure enough, when he looked back at the stick the various runes around it began to glow, and with a blinding flash the markings disappeared. Experimentally, the rod stated to float around the room. It then gave a sigh of contentment.

"Oh, it feels so good to be out of those damn bindings. Honestly, locking me up because he doesn't get my sense of humor? He's almost bad as my creator…" the stick turned the flat side of its star towards Matsu. "Now, what was your question again?"

Before Matsu could speak, Musubi piped up "Is there really a universe where everyone finds love?" she asked with sparkles in her eyes.

"Eh? No, that wasn't it-" Matsu started.

"Is there really a universe when Shirou-Onii-chan and Shiina-Onii-chan play with Kuu-chan all day long?" Kusano asked with sparkles in her eyes.

"What? No, that's not- "

"Is there really a universe where all sake is free?" Kazehana asked with sparkles in her eyes.

"Stop interrupting Matsu!" Matsu yelled. When everyone else in the room was quite, she continued. "Anyway, the real thing Matsu wanted to ask you about was, well, is it really true that every story has a place in the multiverse?"

"Of course!" the stick responded cheerfully. "Why wouldn't that be the case?"

"But that doesn't make any sense, Kaleido-tan! Have you read some of these fanfictions?" She responded, waving a tablet in its direction.

The Kaleidostick titled a bit in the air before responding. "Ahhh, so you want to know about THAT…" It gave a chuckle which seemed ominous to Homura. "Yes, even those exist, though I imagine that simply telling you that isn't enough to convince you."

The information Sekirei furrowed her brow. "It seems pretty unbelievable to Matsu…"

"Excellent! Then my only course of action is show rather than tell. Everyone, make sure to keep your arms and legs inside multidimensional space-time anomaly until we've arrived at our destination." With that, the Kalediostick began to glow and a bubble formed around the Sekirei, including Homura who had forgotten to stay hidden behind the door.

"Eh?" Matsu was taken aback by how quickly things had slipped out of her control. "Wait! That's not what Matsu wanted!"

"Too late! This is more fun!" the rod replied in the same cheerful tone.

"Can I not wear a dress?" Homura asked weakly.

"With where we're going, I can promise nothing." With that and a wail of despair from Homura, the group slipped into the void between dimensions.

* * *

Once the darkness receded from the bubble, the flock of Sekirei found themselves… standing exactly where they started.

"Huh? Wait, did we actually go anywhere?" Matsu asked.

"Of course we did. We're now in an alternate reality of your own universe." The floating stick said in a slightly affronted voice.

"Oh, whew." Matsu breathed out a sigh of relief. "For a moment there Matsu thought you were taking us into some sort of terribly written fanfiction."

Homura didn't know how, but he could almost feel the Kaliedostick giving her an evil smile. "Oh, you poor naïve girl. Who says I didn't?"

Before any of them could respond to that, a voice was heard out in the hall coming towards them. "Wuts this nozie? If itz ambush you cant cuz I haz superhearins!" A man emerged from the hallway, and the first thing that struck Homura as odd about him was that he clearly wasn't Japanese. He had long, flowing blonde hair, and was a towering 6'6''. He had a massive build like a body builder and a handsome face the looked like it was carved from stone. What's more, he had icy blue eyes like limpid tears and…

_Wait, what the hell am I thinking?_ Homura thought to himself, shaking his head to clear away the increasingly verbose description of the man that was growing in his head. _Limpid tears? What the hell does that even mean?_ Looking back at the man, Homura started to see that the longer he looked at him, the more oddly perfect and impressive traits he noticed, like his perfect teeth or finely shaped eyebrows. _Good god, he like some sort demented fractal of description porn._ The interesting thing about this was, in spite of the fact that everything about this man could be described as perfect, all together these features resulted in a creature that just seemed like an idealistic facsimile of a human being rather than a person. The effect was quite jarring, as if he was staring into the deepest depths of the uncanny valley. "Uhhh… Who are you?" Homura managed to say through the mind bending confusion.

"I am Gabrielle Victor Flamewalker Brofist, and im teh most awsom Abkibashi EVARZ!" he said in a manly tone, though that did little make up for the fact that what he said sounded immensely stupid.

"You... what?" Homura was trying to wrap his head around what was going on and failing miserably. He wasn't the only one either, as the rest of Shirou's flock was standing around with their jaws open in shear bafflement at what was going on.

Gabrielle suddenly looked off to the side. "Mah Sekriei sense iz tingilin! Time to getz me another hawt babez!" And with that the man simply _jumped_ up through the ceiling and into the sky. Before anyone could make sense of this, the hole in the ceiling suddenly patched itself up for no explicable reason, making it look like nothing happened at all.

There was a solid minuet of dead, yet baffled, silence before Homura whirled on the Kaliedostick and screamed "WHERE THE HELL DID YOU TAKE US?"

The damn rod stifled a chuckle. "When the multiverse is referred to as the sea of infinite possibilities, it's not just referring to how things might have played out differently due to causal events. It also contains universes that have different rules about how things work, such as the laws of nature or physics. In this universe, there are significantly different rules regarding causality, logic, and sensible grammar. This particular trifecta of traits results in something I like to call the Stupid Zone."

"You certainly got the stupid part right…" Tsukiumi said.

"That's it! You're taking us out of here right now!" Homura shouted at the stick.

"Hmmm… no. I don't feel like it right now."

"Grraaaaaah!" Homura, deciding he had had enough of sentient magical wands for a lifetime, proceeded to storm out of the room with the intent of leaving the house altogether. This was hindered when he made it to the dining room and ran into the doppelgangers of most of the Sekirei he had traveled here with. Normally he wouldn't have paid any attention to them, but he was stopped short when he saw his own counterpart in drag.

"Ggggkk!" was all he managed to vocalize at the sight of himself in the exact same dress as he had been forced to wear a short while ago. Homura honestly wouldn't have been surprised if the damn stick picked this universe because it specifically had this in it. Thankfully, before the horror could truly set it, his thoughts were interrupted by the alternate and much stupider Musubi.

"Love? Love love." She said, as if it made sense.

"Wha…, um, no?" Homura said, unsure of how to respond.

"Love love love love! LOOOOOVE!" She exclaimed happily.

Homura looked closer at her attire and noticed a tag that said 'Hi! My name is Loveicu!' Homura stared at this more a moment before he said "Yeah, I'm just going to go this way now." He turned around to get away from the madness, but found himself face to face with a Matsu who was wearing a princess Leia slave bikini. "Gah! How did you get behind me?"

"|3i7c|-| I |-|ackz0r 73|-| |_|ni\/erse!" She said while peering intently at him.

"Umm… what?" Homura said, in what was rapidly becoming a catchphrase since he got here. It was at this point the rest of his fellow Sekirei had followed into the dining room, and were encounter the rest of the idiotic entities contained therein. Stupid!Kazehana was wearing one of those American beer hats, though it appeared to contain sake in this case, and Stupid!Tsukiumi seemed to be flipping between cripplingly shy to violently angry with every other sentence. Thankful, no parallels to Akitsu or Kuu-chan could be seen.

"U fr0/\/\ 07|-|er di/\/\en7i0n? \/\/007! Jus7 1ike \/ide0ga/\/\es!" Stupid!Matsu continued.

"I'm sorry, but I can't understand a word you're saying." Homura said, coming increasingly close to deciding to solve this entire problem with fire.

"7|-|a7s ca|_|se |_|r n0 1337!"

"For the love of god, you not even using words! You're just making noises with your mouth!"

"Shift+Alt+F5 S1|_|77y Dance!" And with that, she began to dance in a way that was somehow both provocative and incompetent.

Homura struggled to keep himself under control, though a few wisps of smoke arose from his cloths. "How could this possible get any worse?" he said to himself.

Too late he realized the folly of saying this, as then through the wall of Izumo House crashed Gabrielle, carrying what appeared to be Karasuba over his shoulder. He set her table and proclaimed "U r now mah woman!"

Karasuba snarled back "No I hat u!"

Gabrielle leaned forward "lok in 2 mah sexy eyez."

She did, and then imdetiatly proclaimed "Omg ur so hawt!1!11!"

Needless to say, Homura was reaching critical. "That! Doesn't! Make! Any! Sense!"

Gabrielle ignored this. "Sw33t! And now we haz teh sex!"

That's when… IT… happened. It wasn't sex. Homura knew what sex looked like. What was happening in front of him at that moment was affront to all the laws of nature, biology, and even a few of physics. A universal cry of horror and disgust came from the collect Sekirei who were not from this dimension. The only consolation was that Kazehana managed to cover Kuu-chans eyes before she saw anything.

"Oh God! What is that? That doesn't seem biologically possible!" Homura sputtered.

"That's really messed up, even for Matsu…" Matsu said.

"Ah… I don't like that." Akitsu said, finally finding something that was just too wrong.

Through the haze of fury that was protecting Homura's sanity, he noticed that the Kaliedostick had joined the group as well. "Ah yes, I always found the act of coitus to look rather strange, so I imagine that what you're seeing now is like how I see it all the time. Interesting, isn't it?"

Homura could hear the smug amusement in its voice, but it didn't matter. Guided by his rage, Homura had reached the only logical course of action in response to this situation. So then, with a cry of "That's not how a clitoris works!" the world burst into flames.


	10. Chapter 6: Things get Uncomfortable

As I washed the last dish from supper, I sighed and thought how foolish it was of me to get distracted these past few days. Yes, an alternate (and let's face it, slightly crazy) version of yourself and former lover are something to pause and take notice of, but at the same time it didn't mean that my life had come to a halt. The fact that I had forgot about Yukari just showed that things could have gotten worse had I continued to not pay attention. Minaka had announced a little over a week ago that the 3rd stage of the Sekirei Plan had begun and was currently organizing the matches that would start any day now. I was a little perplexed that they hadn't started sooner, but nevertheless I was thankful for the extra time to prepare. Not only that, there was my other problem with the recent Enforcer attack. I had gone over it in my head at least half a dozen times since I started cleaning up and I was still no closer to figuring out just how they found me. Unlike the Fraga magus, it was incredibly unlikely that any of them knew what the runes protecting my workshop were, so they would have destroyed them if they found it. Since I didn't feel my geas activate, that means they didn't know where I lived, yet somehow managed to find me regardless.

I sighed as I put the last dish away. _The world keeps turning, no matter which one you're __on_ I thought to myself. I turned around with the intention of going to Matsu's room to do some more planning (and get some video erased) when I found myself face to face with a small, inquisitive magus. "So, what's this I hear about your Rin and Saber breaking up with you and you being on the run from the Mage Association?" Rin asked with an arched eyebrow.

I managed to stifle a manly 'eep' of surprise at her sudden appearance and question. Throughout dinner, Yukari had alternated between rapidly questioning Rin about my past and making grand (and sometimes widely inaccurate) statements about what I had been doing since I supposedly last saw my high school friend. Rin undoubtedly realized that she should take everything my sister had said with a grain of salt, but it seems that she managed to pick up enough facts to be intrigued.

I rubbed the back of my head and looked off to the side. "Look, whatever my sister might say, I'm the one that broke things off, and it's not like any of us wanted this to happen. When I got word of the Sealing Designation, I had to run. Taking them with me would have ruined their lives, and I couldn't let that happen."

Rin tilted her head to side in confusion. "You got a Sealing Designation? For what?"

"My Reality Marble. It's not the same as Troper's," I said quickly, "but my workshop ended up being raided out of spite when I ended up killing an important heir while defending it."

She gave a contemplative 'hmmm' as she stared at me intently. I tried to hide how uncomfortable it made me, though I'm not sure how successful I was. The thing was, I still hadn't figured out how to act around her. I knew that she was someone I had just met and should treat her as such, but every time I looked at her I saw the small tsundere magus I had fallen in love with. I wanted to hold her and tell her how much I loved and missed her. I wanted to say I was sorry of all the things I said when we last spoke. I wanted to be with her. Considering that I had thought I had moved on from Rin and Saber, it was rather uncomfortable to realize just how strongly I still felt for them.

When Rin spoke she had a strongly empathetic look on her face. "Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Back when we were at the Clock Tower, Shir-Troper never had that problem. Even if someone had searched his workshop, I'd doubt they would have found anything. That place was more of a pile of books and computer terminals than a magus' workshop. It wasn't until Saber-" she suddenly cut herself off, casting her eyes downward. She then looked back up and continued "An-anyway we're not talking about me! What about your Rin and Saber? Did they just let you go without a fight? I doubt they would have considered it 'ruining their lives'."

I winced at the memory of our fight. "No. They wanted to come with me. I refused. It… was pretty bad. The only way I managed to convince them was that Rin could try to leverage her influence with the Mage Association to get it revoked and that Saber need to stay with her master."

She huffed. "I should think it would be bad. I know that I wouldn't have had any of it if Troper tried that on me. " She gave a tired sigh. "Ok, let's hear it."

"Hear what?"

"Your undoubtedly crazy plan to get back to them." Rin said with complete seriousness. "What is it, fake your death? Change your identity and appearance and hope no one notices? Introduce the MA to TVTropes and hope that they'll all be too busy doing Wiki Walks?"

"What?" I said, completely surprised by this assumption. "I don't have any plan."

"Ah, so you're going to go for the indy ploy? A risky move, though if your plans are anything like my Shirou's, then that's probably a good call. Seriously, I have no idea where all those cake crumbs came from…" She said, looking off to the side with a frown while she unconsciously rubbed her backside.

"No, I mean I'm not going back at all. It's too dangerous and I'll probably just get myself killed." I clarified.

"Eh?" Rin was taken completely off guard by my response. "What, you mean you're not even going to try?"

I felt my anger start to rise at this comment. "And what am I supposed to do? I'm a single, third rate magus against a centuries old organization filled with completely morally bankrupt men with far more skill and power than I could ever hope to get. No kind of clever plan or brilliant strategy could help me beat those odds. Not only that, there's the damn Sekirei Plan. If I leave, people will die. So don't you think for a damn minute that I'm not going back because I don't want to!" That last part almost came out as a shout. I was surprised by how quickly my anger had gotten the better of me.

Rin flinched back a bit at my outburst before looking down. "I'm… sorry. That's not what I was trying to say." She looked back at me. "Staying put is actual pretty practical of you, and is probably best thing you can do for now. I only said that because Troper usually comes up with these absurdly dangerous, harebrain plans that fail half the time and, well…" she looked off to the side awkwardly. "I just assumed…"

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. "I'm the one that should be apologizing. I shouldn't have snapped like that. It's just that," I stalled as I tried to find the best way to phrase it, but I ended up putting it plainly. "You look just like her. You talk just like her. Hell, you act just like her in almost every way, so I think it's safe to say that you're not the only one having trouble separating people in their mind. Just having you around is reminding me of how much I miss my Rin, bringing up feeling I thought I had left behind. When it sounded like you were accusing me for not going back it… hurt like my Rin was doing it." I silently cursed myself for the emotions I was feeling. I doubt my Rin would truly consider me at fault for not having a plan to go back to England either, even without all of the Sekirei Plan nonsense I had gotten myself into. However, that did little to reassure the part of myself that thought that maybe there was some way I hadn't thought of and was just too stupid to figure it out.

Rin hesitantly put her arm on my shoulder. "I may not be her, but if she's like me in the slightest then she loves you more than anything. She would never say anything like that."

As much as I appreciated the heartfelt statement, I couldn't help but quirk an eyebrow at that. If my Rin ever saw me again, I'm sure she would verbally accuse me of a lot more than that. Of course she wouldn't mean any of it and it would just be her own tsundere way of showing her worry, but I was still amused by this Rin failing to realize that.

And true to her aforementioned tusndere nature, as soon as Rin realized how intimate the scene had become, she immediately blushed and pulled back, crossing her arms across her chest and looking off to the side. "An-anyway how should I know! You're still probably just as stupid as my Shirou!"

I barely managed to stifle a laugh. This was almost nostalgic. "Maybe we should change the subject," I suggested.

She gave me an even look. "One more thing. If she and your Saber are even the slightest bit like me and mine, don't think for one second that just because you can't get back to them that they won't come looking for _you_."

I felt a slight shiver down my spine when she said that. "S-so, we should probably figure out how to keep my sister away from Troper."

Rin grunted in agreement. "No arguments here. I'm not sure if you noticed, but she's somewhat… affectionate towards you."

"Yes, I know." I said with a sigh.

"And by that, I mean very affectionate."

"Yes, I know."

"And by that, I mean I'm pretty sure she wants in your-"

"I get it already!" I exclaimed, my face turn red as I desperately tried not to think about it.

Rin smiled with amusement at my discomfort. "In any case she went to the bath after dinner. She said something about getting into a fight before she got here. She should be still in there, and I had Troper hide in our room until we could figure out what to do."

I was about to respond and I heard the familiar squawks of outrage from Tsukiumi and squeals of delight from Yukari that indicated that the latter had gotten a little molesty with the former. As the sounds of the inevitable chase began, I put my forehead in my hand and said. "Sometimes her baths are a bit shorter than others."

Rin cocked her head to the side as she listened to the mad chase. "Well, that still shouldn't be a problem unless she goes in my room."

"Yeah," I said, chuckling to myself as I thought about it. "I mean, if she did it would probably result in some Hilarity Ensues, but the odds of that happening are-"

I abruptly cut myself off as I remembered what my counterpart was powered by. Rin and I looked at each other for the briefest moment before simultaneously taking off at a dead run towards her room.

As we sprinted out of the kitchen and into the hallway, I could already see we were too late. The door to Rin's room was flung open, with Tsukiumi standing in the hall looking into the room surprised. As we entered the door way, we saw why. It seems that in her rush Yukari ran into the room without looking and barreled straight into Troper. Both were laying on the ground in a daze, the former laying on top the latter. If that was all there was to the situation, it would have been fine. However…

"Tro-per!" This angry snarl didn't come from Rin but rather from me. The reason for this being that somehow the collision had knocked off Yukari's towel, leaving her naked for the entire world to see. What made this worse was the fact that, for reasons which I can most likely blame him and the Root in equal parts, Troper had been in the middle of changing at the moment and was similarly undressed, save thankfully for a pair of boxers. I may have known logically that the whole situation was an accident and not his fault, but it didn't change the fact that Troper was dangerously close to needing to make my sister breakfast the next morning. I felt my Knight Templar Big Brother Instincts begin to rise, and demand justice for this insult against my sister honor!

Toper was the first to regain his wits. His eyes widened as he saw Yukari, and then they widened further when he looked up and saw me and Rin standing in the doorway, neither of us looking particularly happy with him. Quite predictably, the first words out of his mouth were "It's Not What It Looks Like!"

"You're damn right It's Not What It Looks Like!" I yelled back, a hairsbreadth away from tracing Kanshou and Bakuya. "If it was, you'd be a foot shorter!"

It was at this point Yukari managed to get her bearings. She looked at Troper and began to blush at the sight his mostly naked body which she was lying on top of. Said blush increased to the point of luminance when she realized that she was completely naked. "Aaahh! Onii-chan! Don't' look!" She sprang up and turned around with the intent of finding her towel when she saw me standing in the doorway. "Aaahh! Onii-chan! Don't' look!" With that she turned around again only to come face to face with Troper as he was getting to his feet. "Aaahh! Onii-chan! Don't'- wait, how are you doing that?"

I sighed in frustration as I Face Palmed. Without removing my hand, I bent down, picked up Yukari's towel and held it out to her. "Put this on. I… it's complicated." I managed to say.

I waited what I thought was a suitable amount of time before I uncovered my eyes. Doing so revealed my sister to be looking back and forth between me and Troper with wide eyes and a blush still on her face. "Two Onii-chan…" she said with a slightly sultry voice. I really wish I didn't know of what she was thinking about. I really did. Turning to look at me, she asked. "Is this another one of your 'legacy of a misspent youth' things?"

"For once, no." I said as I tried to come up with a less fantastic explanation than 'Alternate Dimension Counterpart'.

Yukari didn't give me a chance to explain as she immediately started to excitably question Troper. "So, who are you? Are you another one of my long lost brothers? Are you a clone of Shirou made by the evil organization he left in order to secretly take his place? Oh!" she said, peering up at the couple of white strands that dotted his hair. "Are you Onii-chan from the future?"

I think it took everyone in the room by surprise when Troper responded in a completely serious voice "Yes."

"WHAT?" Yukari said with pure shock.

"What?" Tsukiumi said with confusion.

"_What_?"I said with incredulity.

"What." Rin said in a completely flat tone that was not a question.

Troper struck a Reverse Arm Fold pose. By this point he had managed to put some pants on, but he was still topless and the stance managed to highlight his slightly leaner than mine but no less impressive frame. "The timeline is in grave danger, and I have been sent back to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. I can't say much due to the risk of chronological corruption, but I can say that I'm part of an elite organization of Temporal Integrity Agents whose mission is to preserve history from those who would use the powers of Time Travel for evil." He said this with a completely straight face while looking my sister dead in the eyes, as if daring her to disbelieve him.

Yukari, for the second time in a few hours, let out a 'squee'. "Ohmygod Onii-chan gets even _cooler_ in the future! I didn't even think that was possible!" She then began to start rambling very quickly and asking him questions about the future, all of which he responded to with "It's classified."

It was all I could do to keep my jaw from falling open at this farce. Why? Why of all the stories he could have made up he went with Time Police? Looking at Rin, I saw she had a resigned look on her face, shaking her head in exasperation. I guess this sort of thing happened often with Troper.

Paying attention to the conversation again, I managed to catch Yukari say "You know, in this one manga I have, the hero went back in time and met his younger self, and then the two of them-"

"No!" Troper and I shouted at the same time. Seriously, why does everyone keep thinking about that?


	11. Chapter 7: Awkward, with a side of Plot

A few days later, things had managed to go back to normal. Well, back to routine anyway. Troper and Rin were helping around the household wherever they could, I was still repairing the hole in the wall of the Izumo House, and my Sekirei did whatever they usually did, which by most reasonable measures would be referred to as 'shenanigans'. Also, my whole 'thinking in hyperlinks' problem had started to get better, now only happening when I was in Troper's presence. Still, all that time I was still preparing for the start of the third stage, but I was starting to become suspicious. At first the lack of action from MBI was merely puzzling, but now two weeks had passed since the announcement of the third stage of the Sekirei Plan without a single word since. Surely it couldn't take that long to arrange the matches? At the very least, Minaka would be eager to start the next part of his little show, twisted bastard that he was. Even if things weren't ready, I didn't see him waiting around for this long doing nothing. I had Matsu try to hack into the MBI mainframe to see what was going on, and she found a great deal of activity and encrypted information that wasn't there before. Even with a Norito, it was going to take some time to download and decrypt without being noticed.

So when Takami called me out of the blue asking to have lunch with her, I agreed to it immediately for a number of reasons. First and foremost was that so I could get any information I could out of her about what was going on at MBI. Secondly, I was hoping she might let slip how much the company might know about the people I've been burying in Osaka Park. Thirdly and less morbidly, well, she was my mother. We've had a hard time connecting ever since we met, the Sekirei Plan making things even harder for us to really see eye to eye. So, even if I needed information from her, I actually did look forward to spending some time with her and making our fragile relationship better.

This led to me sitting at a table outside of a café in downtown Shin Tokyo waiting for my mother to show up. Akitsu, despite my protests for her to sit down, was standing behind me and to my left in her usual position. At first I had been against her coming at all, seeing as how Takami probably wanted to talk to me alone, but both she and the rest of my flock had been insistent that she come along. After giving it some thought, it did make sense. It was only a few days ago that I had been attacked by a group of magi that had almost captured us if not for Troper's unlikely intervention. It's possible that more could still be in the city looking for me, and I would likely need all the help I could get if they did happen upon me a second time. And out of all of my Sekirei, Akistu was undoubtedly they only one prepared to fight a magus. Hell, she had already done so twice.

I looked back at her to see how she was doing, only to find her staring across the street rather than at me for a change. Following her gaze, I saw the reason for this was a pet store across the street. In the front window, there were a number of adorable puppies playing with each other. Maybe we could visit and see if they would let her hold one after lunch, though I couldn't remember at the moment if that was one of the pet stores that I had been banned from while I'll had been looking for Tsukiumi…

I frowned to myself. Actually, at the moment, I did feel like I was forgetting something important. What was it? Was I up to date on the Sekirei plan? Yes, I went over it last night with Matsu. I did I tell Troper to stay out of sight while I was out? Yes, he promised he wouldn't be seen. Was Akitsu wearing panties? Yes, I checked this morning, though I felt I was getting closer to the mark. What could it be…?

My thoughts were interrupted by my mother suddenly sitting down across the table from me. I didn't quite manage to stifle a manly yelp of surprise. "Ahh! Takami! Where did you come from?"

She gave me an even look. "From MBI headquarters, where else?" she replied sardonically. "Shirou, we need to t-!" The rest of her response was cut off by a choking sound from her throat, her eyes going wide as she looked up past me to my left. Following her gaze, I found her looking at Akitsu who had turned away from the pet store toward Takami. More specifically, she was looking at Akitsu's forehead.

Oh. Right. I forgot that the head geneticist of the Sekirei Plan might be just a little surprised by the fact the Akitsu was no longer scrapped.

"Uhh… I… um…" I stammered as I tried to think of an explanation that was anything but the truth.

Takami ignored me. "Akitsu," she managed to get out. "What happened to your crest?"

"Ah," the ice Sekirei said, and gave one of her smiles that were becoming less rare these days. "Shirou-sama has winged me. He is my Ashikabi."

"Wha… but… that's impossible!" She said. "I went over your biometrics myself! It's biologically impossible for you to bond to anyone!"

Before I could stop her, Akitsu bent down and pressed her lips against mine. Wings of ice bloomed from back, just like the time in the Izumo House where she proved to the rest of the household that she was indeed now a true Sekirei. I was going to have to have a talk with her later about this, considering that we were supposed to be keeping a low profile. With both MBI wanting to keep the Sekirei Plan as much as a secret as possible and with the Clock Tower after me, such blatantly supernatural displays were not a good idea. However, considering that the other patrons were looking at this display with mere surprise rather than shock, I imagine that there's been enough fighting between the Sekirei that no amount of MBI hush money had been able to cover it up from the whole city.

In any case, it clearly had the desired effect on Takami, who sat there looking at Akitsu with an open mouth gape. She eventually turned to me. "What. Did. You. Do?"

"Wh-why do you automatically assume I had something to do with it?" I stammered lamely.

She narrowed her eyes at me, clearly sure I was responsible for this dramatic change in how reality should work. "There is absolutely no way Akitsu could have spontaneously un-scrapped herself. This had to be caused by some sort of deliberate, outside force. For reasons which you may have been able to understand if you actually managed to get into college, it's incredibly unlikely that any sort of random series of events could have caused such a drastic biological change, so that means this was intentional. And quite frankly," Takami looked off to the side, a hint of embarrassment and shame crossing her face. "You're the only person who cares about her enough to try." She returned her gaze to me, her eyes hardening once again. "So I'll ask you again: what did you do? And so help me Shirou, if you say 'legacy of a misspent youth' again, I will smack you upside the head with this table."

I gulped as I looked back at Takami, trying to come up with a suitable explanation that didn't involve telling my rather terrify mother about my vast experience at precisely timed orgasms, but her tone indicated that she wouldn't tolerate my dancing around the subject. In the end, I ended up trailing off into murmurs and hoped she would hear something else. "Well, you see, I just kinda… mph mrm mrph mrp."

I wouldn't have been surprised if my flock back at the Izumo House heard her yell of "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAD SEX WITH HER?"

Damn! I should have known an experienced mother would be able to speak evasive mumble. Takami was standing at this point her chair knocked over when she had suddenly stood up. She looked down at me sputtering, not sure whether to chastise me as a mother for having premarital sex or lecture me as a geneticist about how that didn't make any sense. After a moment to calm down a little, it seems the geneticist part of her won. "That shouldn't have done anything! How could an act of intercourse cause massive physiological changes?"

"Umm…" She was staring at me with those demanding eyes again, and I didn't think the 'she needed more genetic material' was going to work on the experienced geneticist. Say something, anything! "Apparently I'm just that good at it."

Oh god, anything but that! Why would I say that to my own mother? What is wrong with me?

Matters weren't helped any by Akitsu speaking up. "Ah," she said, a wistful smile on her face as she stared off at nothing. "I liked it." Well, that's it. Between my previous relationship with Rin and Saber, my current flock of voluptuous alien women and now this, there was no way my mother wouldn't think I wasn't some kind of sex fiend.

For her part, Takami just stared at me incredulously. "Do you honestly expect me to believe that broke several laws of biology because you're so good at copulation that is practically some sort of, tantric… sex… magic?"

While it was clear she was just grasping at words, it was a little surprising at how dead on she had gotten it. "I, uh, read a book about it and decided to give it a shot." I lied weakly. Takami just cradled her face in her hand and muttered to herself. Good god, this lunch had gotten awkward incredibly fast. "Maybe we should change the subject."

"Oh," she said, narrowing her eyes at me once more. "And what do you think could be more important than this?"

"How about the reason Akitsu was a scrap in the first place?" I said, my voice taking on a serious tone. I wasn't going to ask about it originally, but since the conversation had gone in that direction, I figured I might as well follow up on some suspicions.

Takami was taken off balance by this question. "What do you mean?"

"I mean how did it happen and why."

Takami hesitated for a moment before spoke, picking up her chair and sitting down as she did so. "Well, what you have to understand is… how much do you know about Sekirei, Shirou?"

"Enough." I replied vaguely, it now being my turn to frown. "Why, do you want to know how much you can hold back from me?"

Her face turned into a grimace. "That's not fair. My job requires that I keep some things secret. I have to keep some parts of my work away even from family."

I snorted at this. "Your 'work' as put it seems to be having a hard time staying away from _me_, so I think that point's a little moot. Look, Takami…" I softened my tone a bit. "Mom. This is more than just genes and money. The Sekirei might not be human, they're still _people_. And according to said people's traditions, to some of them, including Akitsu, you're now their mother in law." Both Akitsu and Takami gave a start at this realization, and looked at each other as if seeing one another for the first time. I let that sink in for a moment before continuing. "Please Takami, just tell me what happened."

My mother was silent for some time, looking down at the table in thought. Finally she looked back up at me and said. "I don't know how put this in terms you'll understand, so I apologize if it sounds like I'm glossing over things. However, the real truth of it is that I'm not entirely sure what happened. It was obvious since a few years ago that Akitsu wasn't taking to the adjustments as well as the others, but other than being stronger than she was supposed to be she was doing fine."

"Why wasn't she adjusting like the others?" I asked.

"It's hard to say." Takami said as she fished a cigarette out of her purse. "As talented as I am, most of the ground work on the Sekirei when they were young was done by Takehito Asama."

"Wait," I interrupted, "you mean Miya's husband?"

"That's the one." She confirmed as she lit the cigarette. "He died before the irregularities in Akistu's development started to show. All I can say for certain was that the things we did to her when she was young started to lose effect when she got older. So much so that she became far stronger than most everyone else in the first 8 or so Sekeri."

Hmm. Seems plausible, though unfortunately it didn't tell me anything. "And when she winged herself? Do you know how that happened?"

Takami gave a sigh. "I'm sorry, but I was in a different part of the building when it happened. She went in for a routine check-up when I'm told she started to seize. The crest appeared on her forehead and she passed out."

I looked up at Akitsu to confirm this. "Ah," she said, looking off to the side and her face taking a light shade of pink in embarrassment. "I can't remember."

I felt a particular suspicion in me begin to deepen. "Takami, was there any security footage or record of this check-up?"

"Not that I know of." She frowned at me. "Why?"

"Do you think that MBI might have somehow triggered Akistu to become scrapped as a way to keep her out of the Sekirei Plan?"

Takami opened her mouth, and then proceeded to close it with an audible click. There was a long pause before she said "I'm not sure if anyone besides me at MBI has the kind of knowledge or skill to induce a winging event artificially but… it is possible." Her face twisted into a scowl. "And I wouldn't put it past that bastard Minaka either."

"Do you think you could look into it?" I asked.

"Oh, I most certainly will." She said, cracking her knuckles in an ominous fashion. "And I guarantee that it won't be pleasant for some people."

"Thank you." I sighed out, feeling glad that things had just gotten a little bit better with my mother and relived that I was no longer the source of her ire.

Unfortunately for me, that didn't last long. Takami raised an eyebrow at me and gave me a look. "While we're on the subject of secrets, Mr. Legacy-of-a-misspent-youth, there is still the matter of why I asked to have lunch today."

And things had been so well too.

She continued. "I suppose you've been wondering why the Third Stage hasn't started yet?"

I furrowed my brow. "Yes, I was meaning to ask about that. What is going on with MBI? I find it hard to believe that it's taking them this long."

"Indeed." Takami said, taking a long drag from her cigarette. "Well, I wasn't going to say as much before, but since we're being so open with each other now," she said in a dry tone. "I might as well tell you that the reason for the holdup is that Sekirei are being taken."

"Taken?" I said in surprise. "You mean they're being kidnapped?"

"Yes, and it's been happening over the past two weeks. It appears to be the work of a highly organized group of people, but aside from a few very interesting pieces of information, we have no idea who they are."

"Wait a second, don't they Sekirei have tracking devices implanted in their necks? Can't you simply track where they are?"

When my mother arched an eyebrow, I winced as I realized I probably shouldn't have let on I knew about that. "I'm going to ignore how you know about that for now in light of bigger issues, but yes we can. There have been 3 separate raids so far, but many of bastards keep managing to slip away and try again somewhere else in the city. Not only that, while MBI has managed to recover the taken Sekirei…" Takami paused for a moment, a look of illness crossing her face. "The ones in the best condition were merely deactivated."

I felt a cold, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. "How bad was it?"

"It's currently unknown if we can save some of them at all. At the very least many of them will be permanently crippled in some way." Takami shook her head as if to rid herself of bad memories. "It looks like they were trying to perform scientific biopsies on them, though they did so using no medical techniques that I could recognize. Hell, in some cases I'm not sure how they were still alive when we found them"

Through the horror I was feeling, the cold logical part of me acknowledge that it made a kind of sense. There are any number of amoral organizations in the world that would gladly take apart the Sekirei to learn their secrets. Given the current lock down of the city by MBI armed forces, getting into the city was a much easier task than getting out. Therefore, it might be more practical to perform any experiment while inside the city and find some way to relay the information back out. The real question was who these people were…

The cold feeling in my stomach sudden expanded when I realized the simplest and most obvious culprit. Pressing for more information to confirm my dread, I asked "You said you knew a few interesting things about them?"

Takami grimaced. "Yes, though it doesn't make much sense. During the raids we encountered heavy resistance from the bastards, but they weren't using any conventional weaponry. They seemed to be using some assortment of energy weapons, shooting things like lightning and fire out of things that look like ordinary objects, though there was at least one occasion where a woman was seen shooting a laser from her damn bare hands! Not only that, a few of them showed increased physical attributes during the fighting. Give this, we first thought they might have been genetically or cybernetically enhanced, or maybe even more Sekirei that weren't a part of the 108 that were found by MBI." She sighed in irritation. "But autopsies and genetic analysis from those that died in the raids show that they're completely normal humans! Not a single damn trace augmentation, not to mention the fact that aside from a few anomalous readings, all of their 'weapons' are just pieces of metal and wood!"

Takami continued on about how everything about this people made no scientific sense, but she quickly forgot to dumb it down for me and I quickly lost track of what she was saying somewhere around "quantum thermodynamics" and "metaphysical biology". It didn't really matter because I stopped paying attention when my suspicion was confirmed: the Clock Tower was in Shin Tokyo. Sure, it could theoretically be some other amoral, magical organization (God knows there's enough of them), but since when has my luck ever been that good? I guess this explains the Enforcer attack about a week ago; apparently the city had a number of mages in it at this point. However, it still doesn't entirely explain how they learned about the Sekirei in the first place. While the Sekirei Plan might be a poorly kept secret inside the city, Matsu had told me there was effectively a media blackout about it for anyone outside its boarders. Not only that, magi weren't exactly known for keeping up with current events. I felt a gnawing sense of guilt when I realized that they might have found out about them from their pursuit of me. If that was the case, then everything that was happening now was my fault.

Through my state of numb shock, I realized that at some point Takami had stopped talking. Looking back at her, I saw that she was studying me intently. I nervously gulped and said "Ah, sorry, what did you say?"

She stared at me for a few seconds longer before she said "Never mind. Suffice to say, nothing about these people makes sense. However, the most interesting thing about them, to me at least, is that analysis of street cameras videos combined with data about traffic that has entered the city in the past few weeks have shown that most of these people have come from the same place." She leaned forward and gave me an accusing glare. "England".

It took me a few seconds to realize what she was getting at. "Wait a minute; you can't possibly think that just because they're from England that I have something to do with them!" Seriously, what kind of weak logic is that? The fact that she's completely right was just a coincidence.

She snorted at this. "Of course not. What kind of scientist would I be if a reason as weak as that would convince me?" As she said this, she dug a tablet out of her purse and taped the screen a few times. Placing it between us on the table she said "This is a series of street cameras from around the time of the last raid about a week ago. They seem to be laying low for now, but that's not the point." The screen showed camera footage of a warehouse in the industrial district. Outside it there were several teams of people in urban tactical gear approaching one of the doors. Walking in front of them was Karasuba. When she got to the door she simply lashed out with her katana several times and the door, along with a significant part of the wall around it, simply collapsed into pieces. I managed to make out a flash of light as this happened, most likely a bounded field failing as part of the structure it was linked to was destroyed. Karasuba's form became a blur as she dashed into the hole, the tactical teams following in after her. All I could make out after that was a great deal of flashing light and smoke pouring out of the building.

"MBI has direct access to the city's street cameras. They're mostly used for tracking and gathering data for the Sekirei Plan, but I thought they might be useful for getting information on whoever these people are. I was going over the tapes this morning when I noticed something." Pressing a few buttons on screen the image rewound to a few hours earlier. It showed five people leaving the warehouse, Enforcers by look of their dress. "It seemed we missed a group in our raid. I was about to send word to the Disciplinary Squad when I lost track of them around here at Osaka Park. " The video went forward another hour, switching to a different camera and showed the small group of men and women enter the park.

Oh crap. I do not like where this is going.

"They never left the park, but do you want to know who did about an hour later?" Takami asked with her eyes narrowed. The video sped up again and when she paused it, sure enough, there was a clear picture of me, Akitsu and Troper walking out of the park and back to the inn. I slowly looked back at my mother, the sinking feeling in my gut returning, if for a different reason. For her part, she was giving me a disapproving gaze that had been honed by years of motherhood. "The reason I suspect that you might have something to do with these people is that both of you went into the park and only you came out. I sent I team to investigate and they found a torn up clearing with a few cleverly hidden graves. Not only that, reviewing the footage from other cameras shows that they saw you about half an hour before and followed you in the park." Before I could protest, she held up a hand to silence me. "I know that they could have been after Akitsu as a target of opportunity, but it doesn't change the fact that the 3 of you somehow managed to take down five highly trained operatives using unconventional but powerful weaponry who may or may not have had super human abilities. There's no way you could have done that unless you knew something about them." Her look softened a bit to take on one of confusion. "Also, while I have no idea what it could possibly mean, you being with someone who looks exactly like you is at that very least suspicious. I would have remembered giving birth to twins you know."

I opened my mouth to respond, but then I closed it again when I realize that I had no idea what to say. It's not like I didn't know about the cameras; that was one of the bigger reason I had set up the battleground for my geas in Osaka Park. As sickly as they were, the trees provided enough coverage to keep anything from being seen. I had just figured that so long I kept things discreet while in public no one at MBI would really bother tracking my movements. Unfortunately, this line of logic didn't account for targets of interest that happened to be tracking me.

Whatever the case, this left me in an awkward position. Takami still didn't know what exactly happened in the clearing, and it appeared from her account of MBI's run ins with the Mage Association that her scientific outlook prevented her from even considering the possibility of magic. It's possible I could get away with saying it was all Akitsu doing that saved us and we just got lucky, that it was a coincidence that Troper looked just like me and we happen to be old friends, that I really had no idea who these people were and I didn't say anything before because I wanted to lay low. It wasn't too likely, but it would likely be enough for Takami given that lack of other reasonable explanations. And yet…

I gave a sigh. "It's… complicated" While I could have given all of that as an explanation, I found that I didn't want to. Now that I knew that the Mage Association was in Shin Tokyo, it was only a matter of time before they came after me and my secret was revealed. It would be advantageous to myself and the rest of the Sekirei in general if Takami knew what she as dealing with. On a less pragmatic note, I also didn't want to keep my mother in the dark about my past any more. Lying to her now not only would have put up even more barriers between us, but also would have been pretty hypocritical of me after I insisted she stop holding back herself.

"I'll bet it is." She replied in an even tone. "So start talking."

"Not here." I replied. "They're probably looking for me, so it's best if I get back to Izumo House as soon as possible. Can you come by for dinner tonight?" That should give me enough time to gather my thoughts on the matter.

Takami arched in eyebrow at that. "I don't think Miya would approve of my being there."

"Given the circumstances, I'll see if I can get her to make an exception."

Takami held out for a moment before giving in. "Fine, but I full intending to get the truth out of you one way or another." She got up from the table and turned to walk away, but paused and turned back towards me. "Before I go, I have to know: who was that man with you?"

"Uhh… would you believe time travel?"

She narrowed her eyes. "No."

"Good, then you less gullible than Yukari, but I'm afraid the truth isn't any more believable."

She stood still for a moment before turning around and walking away, muttering to herself. "Oh yeah, this is going to be good." Then it was just me, Akitsu, and an empty table that reminded me that we forgot to actually order lunch. I sighed as I got up, thinking about what I would have to say to the landlady to allow an MBI employee into her home.

"Let's go home, Akitsu." I said. She nodded, her chains clinking slightly as she did so. However, notice that she very briefly glimpsed at the pet store she was looking at earlier. I knew I had just said that I needed to get back due to all of the magi looking for me but…

I sighed again and started walking across the street. "Come on, let's see if they'll let you hold a puppy."

"Ah," she said as she fell in line behind me. "I'd like that."


	12. Chapter 8: Things get Reveled

"Miya, she's my mother." I said.

"And she's an MBI employee. I won't have any of their kind in my household." Miya responded.

I sighed as my conversation with the landlady about having Takami over for dinner continued to go nowhere. It had only been a short while since Akitsu and I had gotten back from downtown, but I had spent just about all of it arguing with about letting my mother into the Izumo House. "I already told her to come over, so can't you please make an exception just this once?"

Miya simply raised an eyebrow at this. "Well, then maybe you should have thought to ask me before making such a promise. Besides, you just had lunch with her," Her eyes crinkled shut, her tone taking a teasing quality. "Should a man of your age really be spending that much time with his mother?"

I frowned. "I had to cut it short lunch short because of some information I learned. I was going to gather the household together to tell them about it after we were done talking, but since you need a reason to let Takami in how about this: the organization of magi that are hunting me are now present in the city and abducting Sekirei, so I need to bring her up to speed about magic."

Miya's eyes at first widened at this revelation, and then narrowed at me. "I… see. Do you happen to know just how they found out about my kind?"

I looked away from her, the small twinge of guilt still present in my gut. "I can't be sure, but it's likely that they found out about the Sekirei while hunting for me." I looked back at the landlady, my voice becoming more resolute. "I said this before and I'll say it again: most of the Sekirei are nowhere near prepared to deal with the threat posed by the Clock Tower. MBI has already encountered them a few times, but they have no idea what they're dealing with. If it really comes down to it, as much as I hate MBI myself for what they're putting the Sekirei through, they're still only just being cruel and uncaring. The Clock Tower will be outright hostile to them, and you do not want to know how the subjects of their experiments so far have ended up."

Miya looked changed to one of concern. "You may be right, but I'm hesitant to simply go with the lesser of two evils. How can you trust MBI not to capture you if you tell them about your… 'unusual' abilities?"

"Because the person I'm telling is my mother." I replied flatly. "Look, Takami isn't just some cog in the great, evil machine. She happens to hate the Sekirei Plan and would likely love to see Minaka pushed of a bridge for what he's done. I trust her enough to tell her one of my greatest secrets. Don't' you think you could give her similar trust for just this evening?"

The landlady looked down and considered it for a moment before replying slowly "I suppose if she is against the plan as you say..." She looked back up at me. "Very well. I would be important for mother to know about this. However, I will insist that she follow the rules of the house while she is here."

"Deal." I said with relief. "Now let's get everyone together so we can let them know what's going on."

And so a few minutes later, the occupants of the Izumo House had gathered in the hall to hear what I had to say. All the occupants except one that is.

"Wait a second, where is Troper?" I asked, looking among the assembled Sekirei and Rin.

Miya frowned to herself. "Now that I think about it, I haven't seen Troper-kun in a while. The last I saw him I had asked him to get the mail, but that was over an hour ago…"

I looked the rest of the people present, but they all just shook their heads. Before I could get worried though, I heard the front door crash open behind me, and then a voice quite similar to mine yelled. "Why did no one tell me he had a crazy Yandere stalker?"

Sure enough, when I turned around, Troper was standing in the doorway, though he looked to be in pretty bad shape. He was leaning against the door frame, looking somewhat flushed and breathing heavily. His cloths were torn in several places and some of it was stained with blood. However, for what I could see of his bare flesh, he only had a few angry red marks across his body. His copy of Avalon was likely healing his wounds, though it appeared it wasn't quite done yet. The odd thing was that in spite of the damage to the rest of his cloths, his longcoat was perfectly fine. Maybe it has some kind of Avert Clothing Damage spell on it?

I ignored the return of my mental hyperlinks and said "Good lord! What happened?"

Troper staggered into the hallway, Rin running up to support him. "Oh, hey, your back. How was lunch? Did you learn anything from Takami? Did you fail to mention that there's this Sekirei with a katana who can't seem to decide if she wants to kill you or have sex with you? Because I'm pretty sure I can answer one of those questions."

I sighed. "I guessing you met Karasuba."

"Was that her name? I didn't really catch it amid all of those attempts to dismember me." He replied dryly. "Also, why was she calling me Minato? She nearly took my head off when I didn't respond because I thought she was talking to someone else."

"Minato was my birth name. She likes to tease me by calling that rather than Shirou. She doesn't stop unless I try to kill her at least once." I explained sheepishly.

"Yes, I got the impression that was your general rapport with her," he continued in his dry tone. He briefly turned to Rin to reassure her that he would be fine, before turning back to me. "By the way, she going to have some rather interesting ideas about what you're capable of the next time you meet."

"You didn't-" I began in alarm.

"Nothing too overt." He said quickly. "The worst she might be wondering about will be some Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics and where I managed to get bullets that travel at mach 6. Too be honest though, I'm not sure I could have beaten her even if I did use my more overt Tropes…"

"What about… that thing you did with the Enforcers?" I said vaguely, not wanting to go into the details of Reality Marbles in front of my flock.

Troper just shook his head. "I'm not that good at it yet. It takes all of my concentration to pull it off, so I normally can't do it in the middle of combat. The last time we just got lucky." He then waved his hand dismissively. "But that's not important right now. Before she started making with the staby-staby, she made mention of fighting against some people with… interesting abilities. I'm thinking-"

"That the Mage's Association is in Shin Tokyo?" I interrupted. "I know. Takami told me." Karasuba coming here to tell me this was troubling, especially with her violent encounter with Troper. I didn't think she would start a fight that would escalate to the level of harm apparent in Troper's clothing just because he behaved a little differently than she thought. That meant she was planning to fight me regardless, likely to see if my unknown abilities were anything like the magi she had been fighting of late. I would have to remember to get a fully run down of the fight later to see what she now thinks I'm capable of.

"What?" Tsukiumi exclaimed. "When were you going to tell us this?"

"I was just going to!" I said, turning back to my flock in annoyance. "Look, here's the short version: The Mage Association is in Shin Tokyo and abducting Sekirei in order to study and experiment on them. MBI is doing all they can to stop them, but they don't know who or what they're dealing with. I've invited Takami over for dinner tonight to explain everything to her so she knows what's going on."

There was a stunned pause at my sudden bluntness at the danger currently facing the Sekirei. After a while, Uzume spoke up. "But won't that reveal to her that you're a magus too?" she asked.

I sighed "It's doesn't matter. Takami found footage from street cameras showing me, Akitsu, Troper and several Enforcers going into Osaka Park, and only the 3 of us coming out. She's already suspicious about what I have to do with these people, and whatever I may have wanted before, she needs this information if she's going to help the Sekirei."

"Right, you know what that means ladies," Troper said, ignoring the indignant squawk from Homura. Not missing a chance to be overly dramatic, my counterpart set himself standing tall and proudly (well, as proud as you could with half your cloths in shreds) and declared "Tonight, we dine at the table of Exposition!"

* * *

"So who are they and what do you have to do with them?" Takami asked almost as soon as she sat down at the table.

I sighed at my mother's directness. When she first walked in the door she had immediately started to demand Troper to identify who he was. Needless to say, she was not amused by his Time Police explanation. It took Miya asserting her authority to get her to back down long enough to get to the dinner table. "Before I go into who they are, I think it would be best to first explain what they are and what they can do." I said.

"Fine, start talking."

I thought carefully about how to proceed. "The first thing that you should know is that these people are human, with no technological or genetic modification whatsoever. While some people may disagree with this," I look pointedly at the landlady, he merely returned a patronizing smile. "I can assure you that you won't find anything different about them using normal means of analysis." I decided to ease her into it, try to appeal to her scientific nature before I dropped the M word. Thankfully for me, Musubi was far too busy eating Troper's delicious food to give ill timed interruptions.

"Are you saying we don't have the right equipment?" she asked.

"That's... true, I suppose." I said after a moment of thought. "The thing is everything they do is based on a completely different system than modern technology."

"Alright, fine, what's the system it's based on?" Takami growled out, clearly not being satisfied by my very general answers.

Running out of verbal room faster than I had hoped, I said "It's based on the use of human will to gather, transform and release energy in accordance with a person's imagination." Really, that wasn't too bad of a definition of magic, if a ridiculously oversimplified one.

Takami, however, did not appreciate my elegant explanation and closed her eyes, rubbing her temples as she did so. "Shirou, that doesn't make a single damn bit of sense. You can say that all technology basically falls under that description, modern or otherwise. And you can't possibly be speaking literally, because then it just sounds like bloody magic!"

Having swiftly run out of creative ways to talk around the subject and her saying the magic word (no pun intended), I decided to just bite the bullet. Rubbing the back of my head sheepishly, I said "Yeah, that's probably why they call themselves magi."

Her eyes snapped open and locked onto mine. "Wait, _what_?"

"They're magi. The organization is named the Mage's Association."

Takami just sat there for a few moments, blinking in surprise at my clearly unexpected response. She then slowly narrowed her eyes at me, palpable sense of doom creeping up my spine as she did so. "Shirou, you're making it sound like these people actually _can _use magic powers. Since that is clearly impossible, I suggest you start your explanation over again in a way that makes sense. Otherwise, I just might have to risk Miya ire at breaking her no violence policy." She said, cracking her knuckles as she did so.

It seemed now was the time to go for broke, unless I wanted to end up with a concussion. I said "I'm sorry Takami, but the truth is magic is real. I know this because," I put my hand out over the table, and Traced an iconic looking wizard's staff. "I'm a magus myself."

Takami's eyes went as wide as saucers, and her mouth dropping open at my (apparent) violation of conservation of mass. After a few seconds I dismissed the staff and waved my hands in front of my mother's eyes. No response.

Huh. This must be what a person suffering from a Divide By Zeroerror looks like.

I went back to eating after a bit, figuring she just need some time to process the knowledge that her world view was fundamentally incomplete. It was a solid three minutes before she started to blink again. Another two after that she finally spoke. "S-so when I said you winged Akitsu using tantric sex magic..." she said with her eyebrow twitching.

I winced. "You... made a really lucky guess." I said in embarrassment, and I felt my face heat up.

"EH?" My entire flock said at once, and I cringed even more. I had forgotten that I had yet to tell my flock exactly how I had managed to wing Akitsu. Considering the looks that some of them were giving me, I had a feeling Miya was going to have a much harder time defending my chastity now that my flock learned that sex with me was literally magical. Troper and Rin had a different reaction though, first looking at me with surprise and then at each other with uncertainty. I think they weren't sure how to feel about this revelation, but I'm not sure why that would be the case.

After the excitement died down (with some help from Miya's Hannya), I began the long process of telling my mother about my past. It was a little more coherent and comprehensive than when I told the same story to my Sekirei, as this time I had time to think about it beforehand. I ended up giving much more detail to my time in England, as that was what was most relevant to our current situation. It was a good hour before I finally finished, and my mother did not look amused.

"So let me get this straight," Takami said as she cradled her forehead in her hand. "You're secretly a mage who participated lethal magic tournament for a magical wish giving cup which you had to destroy to keep the world from being consumed by evil, you used to work for a organization of magi whose grasp on scientific ethics would make Mengele blush, and now you're on the run from said organization for making some kind of super magic, leaving behind your two girlfriends, who are in turn a mage and a 'pseudo-spiritual entity resembling a force of nature'?"

"I'm also incredibly good looking, too." I responded without thinking. Stupid Memetic Mutation. This is all Troper's fault.


	13. Chapter 9: Another Perspective

It was good 2 hours later before I found myself on the porch looking up at the starry sky. Takami, once she got over the shock of finding out magic was real, had slipped into scientist mode and started question me one absolutely everything thing I knew about magic. Normally I would have just simplified things to speed things along, but my mother insisted that she be given every possible detail, no matter how small. It wasn't unreasonable, as she needed to know everything she could about the people who threaten the Sekirei in order to come up with a sufficient counter for their abilities. Unfortunately for her, I was still a third rate magus, so my knowledge of the more nuanced parts of magic were limited at best, and that's not even counting the fact that magi are very secretive about their craft in general. In the end, I had managed to give her a general base of knowledge of the mystic arts, though it was far from complete. One of the subjects I hadn't really touched on was of course Reality Marbles. I had managed to placate Takami by telling her what my 'super magic' did rather than what it meant. If my past record for keeping secrets was any indication, I'm probably going to have to elaborate on that particular part of myself to my flock at some point, but I was still not looking forward to it. As Troper had implied when I first met him, I was pretty such they would be unhappy when they learned that 'my body is made of swords' was not always a metaphor.

I frowned to myself as I thought back to when Takami finally had enough details about magic and turned to Troper for an explanation of himself. His previous joking manner hadn't helped him with this, as it took him a solid five minutes to convince Takami that he was being serious when he said he as from another dimension. I'm still not sure if she believed him by the time she left, but that didn't stop her from questioning him and Rin about all they knew about dimensional travel and mechanics. Thankfully for me, Rin maintained the lie that her name was Sakura. I'm sure that my mother wouldn't be nearly as bad as my sister if she found out that she was my former lover's counterpart, but I had already had enough drama for one day. In any case, before she left she pulled me aside and told me to "be careful around those two. We can't be sure they are who they say they are." I kept the conversation which I had eavesdropped on to myself, but I assured her that that they were telling the truth.

I heard footsteps approach me from the right. Turning my head, I saw Troper walking towards me with a slightly stiff posture. When he got to me, looked past me and said "Akitsu, would you mind if Shirou and I had a moment to talk alone?"

Akitsu, in her usual position slightly behind me and to my left, hesitated briefly before looking at me for confirmation. I think that she was slightly surprised that Troper addressed her rather than me for this, as her passive nature causes most people to ignore her during conversation. I nodded my head, and she got up and walked back into the house.

Troper sat down next to me, but he didn't immediately start talking, instead looking up at the night sky in thought. I could feel a slight tension between the two of us, but I'm not sure why it was there. In fact, there had been a slight tension between me, him and Rin ever since dinner. I don't remember saying anything that would have insulted or alienated the two. Maybe my mother somehow rubbed them the wrong way?

After a while, I decided to take the initiative and said "So, what did you want to talk about?"

He sighed, turning away from the stars and looking at me. "I... Look, I know this isn't any of my business but," he paused awkwardly for a moment before continuing. "You winged Akitsu with a prana transfer ritual?"

"Ah..." I said, it now being my turn to feel incredibly awkward. "Well, yes." I said simply.

"Why?" Troper asked just as simply.

I felt uncomfortable, but I pressed on. "Well, it was the only thing I could think of that might work." I said. "You wouldn't know because you got here after the fact, but Akitsu used to be something called a scrapped number." Troper tilted his head in confusion, and I continued. "The short of it means that she supposedly 'winged herself', and that she couldn't be winged by normal means. From what research I had done on Aksitu and the Sekirei in general, I found that they take prana from their Ashikabi when they get winged as part of the imprinting process. In Akitsu's case, the prana she took would end up being redirected to a crest on her forehead and then dissipate rather than being absorbed normally. I figured that if I could supply her with much more prana than normal, I could overwhelm crest and the excess that leaked out of it would be absorbed like a normal Sekirei."

Troper looked off to the side, nodding to himself thoughtfully. "Hmm... I suppose that could work..." He stared off into space for a few moments longer before he shook his head and turned back to me. "However, while that partially answers my question, that's not what I meant. I didn't want to know the how of your Deus Sex Machina, I want to know why you did it."

"What do you mean?" I asked in confusion. "Akitsu wanted to be winged by me. Why wouldn't I do everything I could to help her?"

Troper's expression unexpectedly became an angry glare when I said that. "Because certain things would end up hurting the people who care about you." He said flatly.

For a moment I blinked in surprise, but I then felt a mixture of shame and anger settle in my gut as I realized what he was getting at. "You're talking about my Rin and Saber, aren't you?" I replied, my own tone becoming flat.

Troper's expression softened and he sighed. "I'm sorry," He apologized. "I didn't mean to make that sound like an accusation. Honestly, I shouldn't concern myself with this at all. You're your own person with your own life and your own decisions. It's just," Again, he paused for a moment before continuing. "Since I met you, I've gotten the impression that you're pretty much me. Sure, some of our mannerisms and history are different, but I figured that put into the same situations, we'd make the same call." He shook his head. "Yet when you said how you winged Akitsu, it just seemed... wrong. Rin told me how much you still feel for your Rin and Saber, so knowing that you slept with another woman is causing some sort of cognitive dissonance for me. I want to understand why you did it."

I looked away from him, trying to calm the several different emotions that were brewing inside of me. I had sometimes wondered if I would ever have to justify my reasons for winging Akitsu to someone else, but the fact that I had to do it to what was basically myself (again) was making it rather difficult. Mostly because I still wasn't sure how to feel about it. After a minute, I finally said "What do you think of Akitsu?"

Troper blinked in surprise. "She's... loyal." he summed up.

I nodded. "She was like before I winged her, too. When I first met her, she said was 'broken' and 'hollow'. When she asked me to be her master, she did it hoping that by going through the same motions as the rest of the Sekirei, she could feel a fraction of what they felt." I felt my chest tighten. "She would do anything thing I ordered, no matter what it was, just she could feel less empty. It hurt so much to watch her try so damn hard to get past being what the rest of her race considered next to worthless." I forced myself to relax a bit before continuing. "To be honest, I wasn't really sure if the ritual would work when I did it, but Akitsu deserved better. She deserved have me try to help her just as hard as she tried to be a normal Sekirei."

Troper said nothing, instead merely watching me with an unreadable expression. Taking his continued silence as an indication to continue, I did so. "Yes, I'd like to be back with Rin and Saber. Yes, I'd like things to go back to the way they were. But I can't. Maybe if I were cleverer or stronger I could figure out a way to get back to them, but I'm not. Not only that, I have a number of women whose biology dictates that they have to love me for the rest of their lives. I never asked for it, but that doesn't change the way things are. I can't ignore the people around me just because I'm wishing for something that will most likely never come. So, I decided that I had to move on." I sighed. "Or at least I thought I had. When I saw Rin, all of those feeling came back, and now I realize that part of me just can't or won't let them go." I buried my face in my hands. "I just... I just don't know..." I trailed off.

After a moment, I heard a groan from Troper. "And I thought my love life was complicated..."  
Taking my head out of my hands, I saw him staring at the ground deep in thought. "Why can't things ever be simple?"

"Because the Root is a cruel bastard that gain amusement from our suffering?" I offered dryly. We looked at each other for a moment before we both burst out laughing. The tension between us dissolved, and we went back to staring at the stars for while. I then asked the question that had been gnawing at me since I met his Rin. "So, do you think I right thing?"

Troper continued to look up at the stars as he answered "Even knowing what I do now, I don't believe I would have done what you did." He turned to look at me. "But at the same time, I can't say you were wrong either. Quite simply, I don't know if there is any 'right' way to handle your situation. I guess the fact that you're trying your best to do what's right will have to be enough. For both you," he gave a smirk, "and the part of me that's apparently concerned with your love life. To be fair though, it's probably the part of me that's trying to live vicariously through you to live out my Harem fantasies."

I couldn't help but snort at that last bit. "Most harem fantasies don't worry about whether or not sleeping with another woman counts as cheating."

"Well, my fantasies just happen to be more refined." he said with false dignity. "You know that I'm a seeker of the Happily Ever After. For me, it's the Type 2 Tenchi Solution or bust."

"So I take it you were the one to suggest that you, Saber and Rin become the one true threesome after your Grail War?" I asked, leaning back and giving him a speculative look.

He grinned to himself as he looked off to the side. "No, that was Rin's idea. I was resigned to finding a more sensible solution when she declared the two of us part of her harem and that she wouldn't hear anything to the contrary. A bit ironic all things considered."

He then got up from his seat next to me. Looking down at me, he said "I don't know how this is going to turn out for you. If you ever do meet your Rin and Saber again, I think we both know that things won't be pleasant when they find out what your current situation is. But for what it's worth," he said with a smile on his face, "I hope that the lot of you can find a way to Earn Your Happy Ending."

With that he walked away, and I found myself wondering for the second time which of our situations he thought was better.

* * *

The next day I had planned to buy myself some more tools to replace the one's I had lost when the shed exploded, but just before I could leave there was a frantic knocking at the door. Upon opening it, I found Shiina standing on the doorstep.

"Aniki!" he said, his face red and his eyes wet from tears "Someone has taken mistress Yukari!"


	14. Chapter 10: This just Got Real

I sat patiently at the dining room table while Shiina franticly told me what had happened. The group of Yukari, Seo, Haruka, and their respective Sekirei where ambushed by a group of enemy Sekirei. While it was nothing the group couldn't handle, they quickly realized that the ambushers were simply a distraction to separate my sister from the group. When they managed to get Yukari by herself, an unmarked van pulled up behind her, black bagged her, and sped off. The enemy Sekirei broke off at that point, their objective complete. Shiina lost sight of everyone in the confusion, but he remember hearing Seo yelling something about going after the van and Haruka panicking and running off. Finding himself suddenly alone and not sure what to do, he ran to the Izumo House to get help.

Shiina leaned back from me, casting his eyes down is shame. "I-I'm sorry Aniki. If I had been stronger-"

"Don't blame yourself Shiina." I interrupted. "I'm sure you did everything you could."

"I think your expression is implying otherwise." Homura said dryly. The rest of the household had swiftly gathered as well when they heard Shiina's panicked outburst.

I did my best to relax my expression, which I'm sure was one of anger. In truth, I was more furious at myself then I was with Shiina. It didn't matter that I had already sent Seo out to look after her or that I couldn't stop her from participating in the Sekirei Plan: It was still my job to protect my little sister. And now she was in the hands of god knows who (though I had some suspicions) because…

I frowned to myself. Actually, why was Yukari kidnapped? Normally I would suspect that she would be used as leverage against Shiina so he would work for the kidnapper. Hell, Higa's flunkies tried that exact same tactic on me. However, Shiina said that the enemy Sekirei immediately left once they had my sister, and didn't bother trying to recruit him. Since he was still active and they would have had plenty of time by now to kill Yukari, it's unlikely that they took her as an easy way of taking her Sekirei out of the game. Something about all this didn't add up.

I was about to ask Matsu to start searching street camera to track the van when my phone bean to ring. Sure enough, the call was from Seo. "Hey Shirou, I've got some bad news-"

"Someone has kidnapped my sister. I know. Shiina came here and told me." I interrupted somewhat sharply, but at the moment I was in no mood for good manners. "Did you find out where they took her?"

I could almost see him hold up his hands to placate me. "Whoa, whoa! It wasn't easy, but me and the girls managed to follow them back to a office building downtown. It belongs to some kind of pharmaceutical company, Izumi International."

I grunted. So it was Higa, though that was hardly a surprise. That still didn't answer the question of why though. "Thanks. I'm going to be putting something together soon. Can I hire you again to help?"

"Ah, don't worry about it." He replied. "Seeing as how I screwed up keeping an eye on her to begin with, this one's pro bono." His tone then took a lecherous quality. "Besides, you know how girls love it when a guy comes to their rescue."

I felt righteous brotherly fury well up inside of me. My Asura mask began to take form, and while I knew he wouldn't see it, I still completed its summoning by yelling into the phone "Making advances on my sister is prohibited!"

Surprisingly, I heard a choking sound coming from the phone. "Oh god, I was hoping you couldn't do that! I was just kidding, I promise! Call me later when you have a plan!" And then he swiftly hung up.

I stared at the phone in surprise for a moment before I said. "Wait, it works through phones? I never knew that." My mind started to race with the implications. This meant that it was feasible to combine magic and technology to certain extent. At the very least it showed that my Asura mask could be carried by digital signals. I wonder what would happen if I could call ever phone in the city at once…

I was snapped out of my musings of literally terrorizing the entire city when Troper said "Wait, you can do the Demon Head thing too? Does that mean other people can learn how to do it?" Looking up, I saw Troper stealing a few fearful glances at Rin, clearly worried that his lover might pick up the technique. It seems that even though Seo somehow managed to see it, the mask had also formed on this end as well, causing various states of discomfort and shock, ranging from Troper's simple paleness to Homura rocking back and forth, wide eyed and muttering to himself "nowhere is safe, nowhere is safe… " The only exception to this was of course Miya, who was instead coving her mouth with one hand and had a slight blush on her face.

Huh, that's kind of weird. Did she get scared of my Asura again and was now embarrassed? Oh well, it probably means nothing.

I decided to ignore Troper's question and get back to the task at hand. "Anyway, that was Seo. He said they brought Yukari to the Izumi International headquarters downtown. It's a pretty safe bet that the self proclaimed 'Ashikabi of the East' is behind this."

"You mean Higa?" Uzume asked somewhat nervously. This was the first she had spoken since she learned that my sister was kidnapped. All while Shiina was explaining what happened, she had remained silent and looked somewhat uncomfortable. "So, what are you going to do bro?"

I was silent for a good five seconds before I responded. "What am I going to do?" I said, my voice reflecting the rage I was currently feeling. "I'm going to find Higa, make him release my sister, and then show him just why it's a bad idea to bring harm to anyone in my family. I haven't quite ironed out the details yet, but what I have so far involves swords, his body, and the liberal application of one to the other."

"I'm getting the feeling that this isn't the first time you've had a run in with this man." Rin stated with an arched eyebrow, taking my casual implication of murder in stride.

"Not exactly." I said. "He's the inheritor of a rival corporation to MBI. I've had to deal with his flunkies before, and I'm well aware of how he views the Sekirei as nothing but objects. Really, taking him out is something I've wanted to do for a while now, but it has never been feasible due to the large number of Sekirei he controls."

"Actully," Matsu spoke up. "I've been keeping an eye on the other main Ashikabi, and Higa has somewhat recently lost a large number of his Sekrei. It seems the Black Sekirei paid him a visit and, well…" Matsu trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid. I had wondered how well my bribing of Karasuba with pastries had turned out.

Rin gave a grunt and folded her arms across her chest. "Well, even if that is that is the case, it sounds like this man has a great deal of recourses and has no problem using them in completely illegal ways to get what he wants. Also, it sounds like he could use a solid kick to the balls." She gestured to herself and Troper. "Count us in."

I blinked in surprise at this. "Well, thank you, but you shouldn't feel obliged to do so. You don't have to go if you don't want to."

Rin snorted. "We don't have to be in this _universe_ if we don't want to. We're still here because we happen to like making things work out for people, or as he likes to put it," she said, rolling her eyes at Troper, "giving people the happy ending they deserve. So that means we're coming with and that's the end of it."

Stupid stubborn Rin. Given how similar she was proving to be like my Rin, I had a feeling it would be easier to stop the Sekirei Plan using a song and dance number than it would be to dissuade the small magus.

I turned back to Matsu. "Exactly what is the state if Higa's forces?"

"The only Sekirei that Higa has left are numbers 16, 18, 22, and 31." Matsu said, listing off the two I had fought on the roof when I winged Tsukiumi, Higa's brain type, and another weapon user. "While I can't get a good layout of the building or the number of personal there due to number 22," Matsu said with a hint of petulance, "I would estimate there would be between 2 and 3 dozen security personal in the building at any given time."

Troper gave a contemplative hum. "You know, those aren't bad odds. If we had a few more on our side, we could probably just walk in the front door and demand you sister back. By the sound of your reputation these days, he'd probably rather just hand her over rather than deal with the full wrath of the 'Ashikabi with Swords'." He said in a somewhat joking manner.

I blinked. "Actually… that could work."

There was a brief pause before Homura said "Wait, what? You can't be serious. I mean, yes, we're certainly a major power in the Sekirei Plan at the moment, but Higa doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would just accept an opponent making demands of him."

"You're right." I agreed, pulling out my phone. "And Troper was also correct in saying that we would need a few more people in order to do something like that. So, we're going ask them with some 'offical' backing."

"Who are you calling, Shirou-san?" Musubi asked as I started dialing a number in my phone.

"I'm calling my mother." I responded, resulting in a few surprised looks from my flock.

The phone rang only once before my mother picked up. "Shirou, I don't have any information about Akitsu yet if that's why you're calling."

"It's not. I'm calling because Higa Izumi kidnapped Yukari."

There was a long pause before my mother said in a seething tone "_What_?"

"About an hour ago, Yukari was thrown into a van which was followed to the Izumi International building. I'm not sure what his goal is, as he didn't try to coerce Shiina into working for him, but I think we have more important things to worry about."

I could almost see Takami's eyes narrow. "You seem rather calm for your sister being in potentially mortal danger."

"That's because I'm planning to meet Higa and ask for her back." I said simply.

"… and why do you think that the kind of man who would steal a teenage girl off the street in broad daylight would simply give her back if you asked nicely?" My mother asked doubtfully.

"Because you're going to lend me the Disciplinary Squad to help." I heard several gasps from the room, but I continued on. "Think about it: Higa doesn't have the power to fight both the Disciplinary Squad and the 'Ashikabi of the North' right now, and if he knows that MBI is aware of his little transgression against the law, he's much more likely to just release Yukari rather than subject his company to shame of him receiving kidnapping charges."

There was another contemplative pause before she spoke again. "And after you get Yukari back, you're just going to leave him alone?"

"I never said that." I said with a frown. One way or another, I was going to make it painfully clear just how big of a mistake he had made.

I heard a grunt of approval from the other end of the line. "Good. Given what I've recently learned about you, I'm sure that you'll find some way to impress upon him the error of his ways." There was a brief sound of her yelling orders at people before she continued. "Normally my control over the Disciplinary Squad is tenuous at best, but I think I can convince Minaka to give the order even if they won't listen to me."

She sounded very confident of that last point. "Because he hates people who interfere with his game?" I asked.

"… Sure, let's go with that." She replied vaguely. "Also, since you're going to be working with her you should probably know that Karasuba has been making some rather… interesting remarks regarding yourself and the organization currently in the city. I'm pretty sure she doesn't actually know, but she at the very least suspects."

I gave a weary sigh. "I know. She ran into Troper thinking he was me and thing got…well, it was Karasuba." I said, that being enough of an explanation. "Needless to say, I know I need to be careful around her."

"Aright. Just give me a call for the time and place where you want to meet with them. And Shirou," Takami voice softened. "Get my daughter back."

"I promise I will mom." I said with conviction.

I hung up and looked at my flock, which were looking at me in various degrees of surprise. Well, all except one anyway.

"That's great Shirou-san!" Musubi said excitedly. "Now I can fight next to Karasuba-san and how her show strong I've become!" I noticed with some worry that she seemed to forget that if all went as planned, there wouldn't be any fighting at all.

And I wasn't the only one to notice this. "Shirou's not planning on any fighting going down, are you?" she said, turning towards me to ask her question. There was a hint of apprehension in her voice, but I couldn't think of why.

"Ideally, no. I just want to use intimidation to make him release Yukari, but things might not go as planned. In that case, it would be good to be prepared for a fight." My face and tone became harder. "Of course, regardless of what happens, I'm still going to introduce Higa to the business end of some sharp, pointy objects." For some reason, this did not seem to comfort Uzume.

"Ballsy," Troper stated while giving me a speculative look. "But you know Rin and I can't be a part of your Intimidation Demonstration, her for Higa not knowing why she's a threat, and me for obvious reasons."

I nodded. "That's why I need the two of you and Seo to sneak into the build while this is going on and try to locate my sister. There's no guarantee that the bastard won't try to sneak her out of the building and play ignorant. I'm counting you if things go pear shaped."

Troper considered this for a moment before nodding. "Right." He then pulled out his sunglasses and put them on his face with an audible whipping noise. "Operation Enemy Mine is a go."


	15. Chapter 11: Just as Planned or Not

"Hello Mina-" That was as far as Karasuba got before she had to tilt her head to the side to avoid the black, oversized Chinese saber I had thrown at her head. It imbedded itself in the wall behind her up to the hilt, vibrating slightly as the black Sekirei gave it an amused look.

"There, I've tried to kill you. Now shut up, stop calling me Minato, and follow me." Without saying anything else, I walked past her, pulled Kanshou out of the wall, and proceeded to walk towards the Inzumi International building without looking back, wrapping the sword back in its bindings as I went.

"Ah, you're back to your usual self Shiroi-chan." She replied cheerfully, as if I hadn't just tired to split her skull open like a cantaloupe. Regardless of her usual casual dismissal of my attempts on her live, she did indeed fall in line behind me. "Are you mad about the fight we had yesterday? I must say, you're looking rather well considering the state you were in when you finally managed to get away from me. Of course, that's not the only thing that looks off…" I could feel her eyes on the back of my head, looking at the distinct lack of the white strands of hair that were present on Troper's head.

As much as I needed her, I really didn't feel like putting up with Karasuba at the moment. After I had ironed some details out with my flock, I had called Takami back and told her to send the Disciplinary Squad about a block away from the building as a rendezvous point. Seeing as how she was following me without asking any relevant questions, I assumed my mother had informed her just what we were doing. "Look Karasuba, even though you're being ordered to help me, I do appreciate your assistance in this. However, my sister's life is currently in danger, so you'll have to excuse me if I'm not up for our usual back and forth."

"You call that a back and forth?" Homura exclaimed from a ways behind me. Out of the 5 members of my flock which I had brought with me (him, Kazehana, Tsukiumi, Musubi and Akitsu), he was of course the one the most surprised by my attempted murder of Karasuba. Tsukiumi, Musubi and Akitsu were less surprised as they saw how things went between us when she came to visit. Oddly enough, Kazahana just arched an eyebrow and shrugged, deeming it of no importance.

Not only that, my Sekirei weren't the only one's surprised by our behavior. "You're just going to let him get away with that, Karasuba?" Bentisubasa said incredulously. "Seriously, I don't get why you're so obsessed with this guy. He can't be nearly as good as Natsuo…"

"Maybe she would like Natsuo more if he tried to kill her ever now and then…" Haihane said thoughtfully.

I did my best to hold back a sigh as I walked through the front doors of the Inzumi International building. The ground floor was a spacious layout with a number of comfortable looking chairs and couches spread out for waiting. Right before the elevators there was a reception desk with a pleasant looking young woman staring at us with growing concern.

"We're here from MBI to see Higa Izumi about the immediate release of Yukari Sahashi." I said to the woman with no preamble.

For her part, the secretary gave us a speculative look before asking nervously "Do you have an appointment?"

Before I could respond, Karasuba spoke up from behind me. "I take it you weren't here the last time I visited, were you?" She had a predatory grin on her face and the thumb of her left hand was stroking the hilt of her sword. She then pointed to a much more terrified looking security guard by the elevator. "Looks like he was though. Maybe you should ask him what happened when I was told I didn't have an appointment."

The secretary took one look at the guard, promptly decided that she wasn't getting paid enough to try and stop us, and then turned back to our group and blurted out "Mr. Izumi is in a meeting on the 25th floor! You can find him there!"

"Thank you so much." I said with a smile. Without another word, we walked past the reception desk and into the elevators, letting the Sekirei pile in first with me stepping in last and pressing the button for the 25th floor.

As the elevator began to rise (and I desperately tried to not to think about who in this somewhat cramped space was groping my backside) I started to wonder how Troper's team was doing. He, Rin, Seo, the lightning twins and Shiina should have been sneaking into the building through the loading docks at that moment. It was their job to make their way through the building discreetly and try to find out exactly where they were keeping my sister. My counterpart and I each had a two way hand radio to use in emergencies. While they wouldn't be needed if everything went as planned, it was reassuring to know that there was a backup if things went wrong. I just wish the lot of them hadn't decided to 'disguise' themselves with bandanas across the face. Sure it kept people from identifying them, but looking like a bunch of robbers was not going to help if they ended up getting seen. Troper added a wide brimmed hat to his ensemble, and this combined with his longcoat made him look especially like he had walked of the set of an American western movie. When I asked him why, he simply said 'when I realized I had the look going, I just decided to go with it.'

Stepping off the elevator, we made our way down the hall, briefly asking a bewildered looking intern where Higa was. We eventually came to a set of double doors, which I pushed open without delay. As I stepped into the room, there were several things I noticed all at once.

The first was that the room was surprisingly large, in both surface area and in height. I wouldn't have been surprised if you could have fit a small house in there. Adding to the rather opulent feel of the room there were several marble columns along the sides, all empty space between them until they reached a large desk in front of several large windows. Or at least I thought there was a desk, as the next thing I noticed was that at the other end of the room there were at least two dozen people standing and looking in my direction. However, these features took a back seat to the scent my nose picked up the moment I stepped across the threshold.

Magic.

"Magus!" I screamed as I tore Kanshou and Bakuya from my back, Reinforcing myself has I did so. My sudden shout managed to stop the Sekirei in their tracks, though Homura, Kazehana, and Bentisubasa had already stepped into the room with me. Before we could do anything though, there was a flash of light along the doorway and a telltale tightness in my chest that indicated a bounded field becoming active. Suddenly my reflexes screamed at me, and I found myself jumping back from the door just in time to see faint lines of silver streak out from behind the two closest columns and attach themselves to the 3 Sekirei who were now trapped in the room with me. As soon as the strings touched them, they all screamed out in pain, collapsing to the floor.

"Shirou-sama!" Akitsu's voice was muffled a bit by the field as she called out to me, her hands pressed against the slightly simmering barrier between us. Daggers of ice began to accumulate around her as she clearly intended to try an punch through the barrier, but she suddenly jumped back as a gout of flame shot through where she had just been standing. I saw Karasuba blur past, charging at what was most likely the Enforcer who shot the fire. I heard more distorted shouting from the hallway, and I could gather that the rest of the Sekirei in the hall were also caught in their own battles.

I had only a few moments to stare in confusion at the 3 writhing in pain on the floor before I heard a voice with a light Germanic accent speak up from behind me. "Well, what do you know? I thought it was a long shot, but it seems you were right when you said kidnapping that whelp would draw him out, Mr. Izumi." Turning around, I saw the crowd part somewhat to reveal a tall, thin man with dark hair and hawk-like features looking at me in amusement. He could have been considered well dressed if a bit old fashioned, clad as he was in a black embroidered dress coat and slacks. This combined the with general arrogance and distain he was wearing like a second skin made it painfully obvious that he was the magus who was responsible for this.

"Of course I was right." A second voice called out from behind the desk. I couldn't quite make him out through all the people, but it was a safe bet that this was Higa Izumi. "The girl had been seen walking through the North district far too many times to not be associated with the Ashikabi of the North." I felt a cold dread creep up my spine when I realized what was going on.

Higa had somehow ended up contacting and joining forces with the Clock Tower. They set a trap for me.

And I had walked my flock right into it.

I was of half a mind to Trace and launch a dozen swords in their direction that instant, but something about the other people in the room held me back. Namely, not one of them had shown the slightest reaction to what was going on around them. They all had a vacant, glassy eyed expression that was indicative of hypnosis. Looking closer, I saw that they were an assorted group of office workers and security personnel, probably Higa's own employees. _They're using them as human shields,_ I realized.

"Oh where are my manners, allow me to introduce myself," the tall magus said with a slight inclination of his head. "I am Victor Eltanwise, heir to the noble house of Eltanwise." In the back of my mind, I vaguely remembered how Eltanwise was a fairly minor bloodline which had some sort of stigma attached to it which I couldn't remember at the moment. "And you I presume are Shirou Emiya, the whelp that was given a Sealing Designation for toying with something he shouldn't have and actually getting it to work."

I ignored the fact that he knew who I was and charged forward, planning to jump over the mass of people and land behind them so I would have a clear shot at the magus. My Reinforced legs launched me into the air, easily lifting me over the heads of the enthralled employees. However, just as Eltanwise's full body came into view, I saw the slightest movement of his right hand and one of the security guards jumped in the air to meet me. I had anticipated that some members of the crowd might try to stop me, but I certainly didn't anticipate any of them jumping ten feet in the air to meet me head on! I was so surprised that I failed to block the man's shoulder to my center of mass, which caused me to tumble backwards and hit the ground with a heavy thud. Due to my Reinforcement, I was able roll with my momentum and end up on my feet rather than lying sprawled and winded on the ground. _What the hell?_ I thought. _That man isn't a magus, and even if Eltanwise enhanced him somehow, hypnoses would__n't allow you that mu__ch control over a person…_

The magus simply tisked at my actions. "Now now, it's rude to interrupt someone while they're talking, whelp." He said is a tone that one might use on a petulant child. "I suppose I'll have to put you in your place." With that and another wave of his hand, five of the security guards broke off from the group and rushed at me.

Far too fast.

I was barely able to bring up a guard before the first man punched at my mid section, his fist instead meeting the flat side of Kanshou. There was an audible crack of the sound of the bones in the man's hand breaking, but he didn't seem to notice or care. I ducked under the strike of a man to my left, shoulder checking him as I did so into a nearby pillar. He staggered for a moment, his left arm hanging limply at his side before he dashed back at me, completely ignoring the dislocated limb. _Whatever's enhancing them is increasing their speed and strength, but not their durability?_ I thought as a jumped away from a third man who tried to jump down on top of me from above. _What kind of technique is that?_ Whatever it was, it wasn't quite as good as my own Reinforcement skill, and the attackers themselves only showed the most basic skill at combat, if even that. However, those advantages were mitigated by the fact that there were still five of them all attacking at once. Not only that, while they seemed to show no concern for their own wellbeing, I did. As far as I knew, these were just innocent people being manipulated by Eltanwise.

Even with the battle unfolding in front of him, the magus continued to talk. "You know, I should really thank you. If you had never killed Archibald, the Clock Tower would have never bothered assigning me to track him down and finding that he disappeared in this city. But since you did, I was able to discover this rather fascinating new Type."

_Oh god, he's really going to __monologue__, isn't he?_ I thought to myself as I swept the legs out from under one of the guards and drove is body into the ground with the pommel of Bakuya.

Indeed he continued on. "Of course, there was the problem of finding who did kill Archibald. Once I learned of the precious commodity this city holds, it became clear that it was done by a magus who wanted these Sekirei for himself." He sounded rather impressed with himself, enjoying the chance to lord his superior intellect over me. Clearly, this man could not grasp the villain ball any harder if he tried. "So when Mr. Izumi told me about a rather troublesome young man named Shirou Emyia had been causing problems for him, it became abundantly clear that the man by the same name who had escaped the Enforcers several months ago was the one responsible." I didn't see so much as feel the sneer he gave me. "So, did you think that by being the one to bring the Sekirei to the Clock Tower, they would revoke your Sealing Designation? I'm afraid that's not how it works, whelp."

I didn't bother trying to correct his misconceptions and instead focused on trying to figure out how he was controlling these men. If I could deduce what it was, then I might have a chance of breaking the connection with something in my arsenal. As my mind raced through all the enchantments I could think of, my Reinforced Eyes allowed me to see just the hint of a silver string coming from the man's neck as I moved past a man who was trying to grab me. I quickly traced the line back to Eltanwise's hand. That combined with the silver strings that incapacitated the Sekirei tickled something in my memory, something I had heard about from Rin a long time ago…

I suddenly remember, my eyes going wide and blurting out in surprise "Etherlite?" I couldn't remember any specifics, but I did remember that it was a thread of ether that could connect to a person's nervous system. The house that created it was feared and scored because of its use to read other people's minds. Although, it seemed that Eltanwise was using it for a lot more than just that. If the Clock Tower learned that he was using it (and just how he was using it), there was a good chance he might end up with his own Sealing Designation.

The magus affected a tone of mild surprise. "I'm surprised that a third rate magus like yourself was able to recognize it. I'll admit, it is somewhat vexing that the Eltanwise family is looked down upon just because we happen to be a distant branch of the Eltnam that originally created it. Still, if you're going to be accused of something anyway, you might as well do it. What you see is the work of hundreds of years of refinement." He said, making a grand gesture to all the people in front of him. "Normally I would say something to the effect of you not being able to live now that you know my secret, but I wasn't planning on leaving you in a state in which you could talk anyway."

_Oh yes, _I thought as I finally managed to put one of the guards down with a swift strike from the flat of my blade. _He has definitely grabbed the villain ball and is holding on with all of his might._ Unfortunately for me, that assessment wasn't quite true as he sent out two more of his thralls to replace the one I just downed. He may have been monologuing, but he was doing it behind several human shields while his minions keep me occupied. Furthermore, this little revelation didn't help me much. I tired cutting at the threads with Kanshou and Bakuya, but it was about as effective as a dull pair of scissors. That meant that I would have to use something that directly anti-thaumaturgy, and that meant only one weapon I had might work.

Jumping above the three that had rushed me at that moment, I threw Kanshou low at a fourth. He bought the feint, and jumped up into the sir to meet me. Rather than finding my right hand empty however, he ended up jumping straight into another quickly traced weapon. "Rule Breaker!" I shouted as it pierced his torso. As I rode his body to the ground, I felt the blade draw a fairly small amount of my od before I saw the thread detach from his neck. The man was unconscious before we hit the ground.

I felt some elation at how little it cost to break the connection. I wasn't sure if I could do it 2 dozen times, but I should be able to free most of them. My good feelings were cut short however, when another guard came at me from the left and punched not at me, but at the small, strangely shaped blade in my hand. The fragile dagger shattered from his enhanced strength, and I was force to jump back. Stealing a glance at Eltanwise, I saw that he was no long smiling. It seems him realizing I had some way to break the Etherlite connection had made him become much more wary.

"Mr. Eltanwise, does that mean you would have to silence anyone who saw you using this ability?" I heard Higa say as I summoned the black blade back to me, grabbing it and letting its momentum swing me around to strike the person behind me with the flat of the blade.

"Hm? Why of course that doesn't apply to _you_," the magus lied, quick as a rattlesnake. "That's mostly just for him and the few addition magi I've had to add to my ranks since I started this operation. Even then, they're all fairly unimportant people with little to no weight within the Clock Tower. They should have to good sense to keep their mouths shut if it gets results." There was a brief pause as my newly Traced Rule Breaker was shattered before I had the chance to use it. "Well, all except that bleeding heart anyway…"

Eltanwise turned back to the battle "Enough! While it was fun playing with you for a bit, I'm afraid I simply have more important things to do." With a gesture from the hand holding the Ehterlite threads, two of my assailants rushed straight at my blades, as if trying to impale themselves. Lacking the time to do anything else, I let my weapons disperse back into od to prevent them from being killed. The two men latched themselves onto my arms, and with the weight of a third man from behind I toppled forward onto the ground. Shortly after that, another 3 piled on top of me.

Damn it! There was no way I could move under this many strength enhanced men. The only options I had left would end up turning the men on top of me to mincemeat.

Eltanwise gave an amused grunt. Since I had landed on my stomach face forward, I could see him smirking at me. "You're much softer than I thought. I was going to impale them on your swords so that they could wrestle them away from you. Well, time to end this." With that I saw him cast out his left hand and saw an Etherlite thread head towards me. Apparently he intended to use it on me directly, probably in a similar manner as the three Sekirei still by the door.

As fast as I could, I did the only thing I could think of that might protect me. I quickly incanted "My body is made of swords," just before the thread touched the base of my neck.

For the briefest moment, I was no longer made out of flesh and blood, but of steel.

What I had hoped would happen was nothing, as the thread probably required a normal human biology to interface with. What might have happened was that I would have needed to use my magic resistance to fight of the foreign prana.

I was not expecting what actually did happen.

Eltanwise gave out an animalistic scream of pain as dozens of large gashes appeared on his body. As he did so, everyone else in the room besides Higa sized for a brief moment before collapsing on the ground unconscious. The magus fell to his knees as I rose to mine, push the security personnel's limp bodies off of me. I looked on impassively as he tried to stop the flow of blood from the numerous wounds that had spontaneously appeared on him. I wasn't entirely sure what had just happened, but I wasn't going to let this chance pass now that I had a clear view. As he looked up at with a bewildered and bloody face, I Traced a simple broadsword and launched it at his head at 90 mph. He was in too much pain to raise any kind of defense.

The results… weren't pretty.

Higa sat in mute horror as the sword imbedded itself in the front his desk, pinning the remains of Eltanwise's head to it. I turned away from him, moving toward the back of the room to where the Sekirei lay. The threads had disappeared, and now they were moaning in was I hoped was considerably less pain than they were experiencing before. "Are you alright?" I asked.

"Of course I'm not alright!" Bentisubasa screamed. "What the hell was that? I'm going to… kill…" she trailed off as she saw the bloody mess I had made.

"It seems there is a reason you consider yourself a fighter and not a lover…" Kazehana said in a pained voice, giving the carnage a wary look.

Homura simple waved me off as he sat up. "I'll be fine, I've experienced worse." He looked passed me and his eyes widened. "Shirou!" he said, pointing towards the end of the room.

Turning around I saw Higa exiting through a door on his side of the room. I turned back to Homura, wanting to give chase but not wanting to leave my Sekirei in such a state.

Homura must have seen the conflict on my face and said "Go! We can take care of ourselves!" A bit surprising coming from the man how had insisted that I should just stay out of combat altogether.

I nodded once and took off, my Reinforced legs swiftly carrying me through the door in pursuit. I briefly lost sight of Higa as he ducked through several corridors, but my superior speed allowed me to reach an intersection and locate him before he ran around another corner. I saw that he was yelling something into a hand held radio like my own, but I couldn't make out what it was. It didn't matter though as only a few short moments later I found him running past some cubicles in the direction of the stairs. Retracing Kanshou and Bakuya, I threw the white blade in front of him to head him off.

Because he was running along the end of the row along some windows, the sword crashed through the glass and went out into the air. Higa turned to me and gloated "You missed!"

I gave him a cold smile in return, moving my position to the side slightly. He apparently hadn't been paying too much attention to the fight earlier. Otherwise he might have known how I can summon the sword back to me, and might have paid more attention to the white blade which was currently flying back towards the building, with Higa directly between it and me. Its trajectory probably wouldn't kill him, but there was a good chance he was about to find himself with one less limb.

Or at least he would have if a white sheet of cloth didn't suddenly lashed out from the side and knocked Bakuya off course.

An instant latter a woman dressed in several swaths of white cloth jumped to Higa side. "Uzume?" I said in surprise. "What the hell are you doing?" Last I saw her she was wishing the lot of us luck as we left the Izumo House.

Uzume looked at me from under her cowl, and I could see that her eyes had the determined glare of someone who was ready to die for what they loved. "I'm sorry Shirou, but I can't risk it. I'll always appreciate the friendship you gave me," she wrapped one of her arms around Higa. "but the next time we meet, you will be my enemy." And with that she leapt out the broken window with Higa.

I ran to the window to see her extending a bolt of cloth to the top of a nearby building, using it to swing away not unlike a certain American comic book character. I traced my bow and lined the pair up in my sights… and did nothing as they swung out of view.

I let the bow dissipate as I stared after her in confusion. Why was Uzume helping Higa? Before I could think anymore about it, I heard Troper's voice coming from my belt. "Shirou! There are magi in the building!"

I sighed as I unhooked the radio from my belt. _No, really?_ I thought to myself as I cursed my counterpart's completely too late warning. "I know. I fought and killed one. Higa escaped and Uzume's helping him for some reason. Where the hell have you been?" I snapped.

There was a brief pause before he responded. "I'm sorry, I got carless. We weren't expecting anything magical, so my team ended up walking right into some kind of defensive sleep spell. It was a pretty powerful one. We were all knocked out before we knew what was happening."

"What's your status?" I asked.

"I don't know where the rest of my team is, they seem to have split us up while we were unconscious. I just woke up."

"How did you get away? Didn't they restrain you somehow?"

There was another pause. "I think they were going to but… Well, I can't be sure because I was unconscious at the time, but I think the guy who was looking after me tried to read my mind."

I blinked. "Why do think that?"

"Two reasons," he said. "One is that I've suffered mental incursions in the past, and I know what it feels like afterward. The second is, well," His tone became sheepish. "There's a guy in the room with me who's curled up in a fetal position and keeps muttering to himself 'nothing is real' and 'they're all reading me from beyond the wall'."

It was at that moment I decided to try very hard not to think about what the inside of Troper's mind was like and instead asked "Does the man have a sort of silver thread is his hands?" I wanted to confirm a hunch I had.

There was a longer pause during which I assume Troper had gone to check. "Huh, yes he did." He eventually replied. "How did you know?"

"He's probably the brother of the man I killed." I said. It was impossible to be sure, but given Eltanwise's reaction and Troper's own experience, it was probable that making a connection with Etherlite is very bad for the user if the person on the other end happens to have a Reality Marble. It also seemed the exact results were as diverse as they were horrifying. "Look, things have gone south really fast. We need to regroup as soon as we can."

"Right." Troper agreed. "I'll look for my team and you look for yours. We keep in contact and set a rendezvous point when we have everyone."

"Make sure to keep an eye out for Yukari." I said as I began to run back to where I had left my Sekirei. Magi or not, I still needed to find my sister.


	16. A Crack in Tropes: A Certain MisWARNING

I rubbed my temples to dull the oncoming headache I could feel building due to the latest bizarre happenstance that was complicating my life. Turning away from the group of unfamiliar people sitting the other side of the dining table, I asked my counterpart "And just why do you think I need an apprentice?"

"It's simple," Troper!Shirou said in a tone of voice which implied it should be painfully obvious. "Ever since our three duplicates returned to their respective dimensions, there are far too many women who want in your pants for you to handle right now. By taking on an apprentice to handle the overflow, that frees up more time for you to the things you want." He gestured to the young man sitting directly across from me. "Plus, I found the perfect guy for the job. This aspiring young Harem Hero has already collected a sizable harem of women with his numerous feats of badassery."

"What are you talking about?" The young man across from me asked. He looked to be around 16 years old, definitely a high school student going by the slacks and short sleeved button up shirt. He had a mass of spiky black hair on top of his head and weary expression on his face, as if he had faced a run of bad luck lately. "I don't have a harem! I just helped these girls out when they were in trouble, that's all!"

Troper!Shirou and I both gave him a flat look as all the women on his side of the table proceeded to give him exasperated glares. The sheer level of obliviousness the man in front of me just displayed regarding the numerous females surrounding him was almost mind boggling… and, as I was a little embarrassed to admit to myself, causing me feel some déjà-vu.

My doppelganger coughed. "…As you can see, he needs someone him how to handle the large number of women pursuing him, and soon before their numbers grow any larger. Or before he does something stupid like picking one of them, causing the rest to try to kill him. That's what you'll be teaching him."

I briefly considered pointing out that I wasn't exactly the smartest when it came to understanding women either, but I thought better of it and instead asked the young man (whose name escaped me at the moment) "So, umm, what you do normally?"

He rubbed the back of his head in a sheepish manner. "Well, aside from going to high school, I spend a lot of my time helping out people wherever I can. I also often end up in fights with amoral magician with shady agendas, and getting beat up by the numerous women in my life for reason I don't really understand."

I felt a brief moment of vertigo as I suddenly saw my own sixteen year old self suddenly super imposed over the kid's form. _I thought I was the only one_ I thought, small tears of sympathy starting to form in my eyes.

Before I could say anything to my newfound brother, the girl to the young man's right, a small blue haired nun in a white and gold habit of all thing, finally stopped stuffing her face with the food I prepared to say to him "Touma! You need to accept this job so he can keep feeding me this delicious food!" Indeed, this was the first time she had spoken since I set the food down on the table. I had never thought I'd see the day, but I think this nun could actually give Saber a run for her money when it came to the sheer speed and quantity of food she could absorb. I shuttered at the thought of the carnage that would result if the both of them ever sat down to a meal together.

"Index," Touma said, and I could almost see an anime style sweet drop on the side of his head. "I can't take a job just because you like the employer's cooking."

"Yes you can! Stop being selfish and think about me!"

Touma sighed. "Well, his cooking is pretty good. Maybe if you ate enough of it you'd finally be able to grow out of the pedeo body of yours."

Index's fists balled up in righteous fury. "Touma! Are you thinking lewd thoughts about me again?"

"What? No, of course not! I'm just stating the obvious! I'm mean, sure, I know better than most because of all those times I've seen you naked but- uh oh."

"TOUMA!" With a final cry of feminine fury, Index launched herself at Touma and sank her teeth into his head. Touma began to thrash around, yelling as he tried to pry Index's jaw off his cranium with no avail.

To make matters worse for him, it seemed Index wasn't the only one who was angry at his comment. "Wh-what do you mean you've seen her naked?" yelled a middle school girl with short hair. She got up and walked over to where he was sitting, looking so angry I swear I saw sparks of electricity arching off her head. "Just what have you been doing with her in that apartment of yours?" She started to kick him until he fell over, and I swore I could hear a muffled cry of 'Fukoa da!' among the gnashing of teeth.

At that moment, I felt another odd bit of sympathy for the young man, knowing full well the pain caused by small girls and their surprisingly sharp teeth. I looked at Troper!Shirou and asked "Where did you find him?"

"Oh, a couple of dimensions over," he replied vaguely. "Well, for the sake of the poor boy's skull, I think we should assume he's on board." Troper!Shirou blinked in surprise as he looked back in Touma's direction. "Oh look, he's learning from you already! He already has his own version of Akitsu."

I was confused for a moment before I followed his gazed, and then I jumped in surprise when I saw a girl I had somehow completely failed to see before. She had long black hair, was dressed in a shrine maiden outfit, and was kneeing to Touma's left just like Akitsu usually did in regards to me. "Gah!" I exclaimed "Where did you come from? How did I not see you before?"

"… I was always here." The girl said in a soft and somewhat depressed tone, as if people not noticing her was something she expected.

"Ah," Akitsu said from her usual position to my left. "I saw you."

"…Thank you." The two gave each other a brief smile, finding an odd camaraderie in their respective passive natures.

"Anyway," Troper!Shirou said, "We should probably stop those two now before Miya comes back from making tea." He pointed at the two girls who were still inflicting Amusing Injuries on my newly acquired apprentice.

I thought about it for a moment before picking up a plate and loudly saying "Well, there's still a large amount of sushi left over. I guess I just have to throw it out…"

Faster than I could see, Index detached herself from Touma and practically jumped on the table, knocking the short haired girl aside as she did so. "No! I'll eat it!" I put the plate down in front of her and she resumed consuming the food faster than several small nations could produce it.

Straightening herself, the middle schooler looked down haughtily at Touma. "Well, don't think you're off the hook. I still intend to beat you someday!"

Touma sat back up and stared at her. "You're still going on about that, Biri-biri? Why do you care about beating me so much? And for that matter, why do you care about what goes on in my apartment?"

In response, the short haired girl blushed and stuttered "Wh-what are you talking about? I-it's not like I care about you or anything…" she looked away from him. "You just shouldn't be doing inappropriate things with other people…" She suddenly realized the implication she had made and franticly looked back at the young man, a Luminescent Bush on her face as she did so. "Wait! I'm not saying you should do inappropriate things with me or anything! It's not like I think about that kind of stuff!"

Wow. And that girl could give Rin a run for her money on whose more Tsundere.

"Onee-sama isn't honest with herself… Misaka says as she tries to move closer to her Savoir." This came from a girl almost identical to the short haired girl, save for some slightly different colored eyes and a pair of night vision goggles on her head. She ended up squeezing herself in between Touma and Index, wrapping her arms around his as she did so.

I sighed as this resulted in some more chaotic shouting. I then noticed that one of the girls wasn't participating in the madness before me, and was instead kneeing primly off to the side. She seemed older than the other assembled girls, with long black hair, a white tee-shirt tied off at the mid-rift and a pair of jeans with only one pant leg. Most notably, she had a massive nodachi resting as her side. I blink a few times in surprise before I asked her "Umm, excuse me? Are you sure you're with him and not a Sekirei that happened to wander into the house?"

The swordwoman gave an annoyed scoff. "Of course I'm with him." She gestured to the young man currently obscured by the gaggle of girls. "Seriously, why is it ever since I got here people keep mistaking me for one of these 'Sekirei' things?"

Troper!Shirou spoke up before I could. "Probably because of you borderline Striperiffic outfit, your beautiful looks, your ridiculously oversized weapon for you size, your superhuman fighting prowess, and let's not forget your huge-" he abruptly cut himself off at the sound of steel being drawn a few inches from a sheath and hastily corrected himself "-tracks of land."

Lucky for him it seemed where she was from didn't have Monty Python, so she merely looked at him in confusion. After a few moments, there was a knock on the door. "I'll get it!" Troper!Shirou said quickly as he stood up. "It's probably Touma's parents."

"Wait, what? Why would his parents come here?" And for that matter, why would they be getting to the door just now? Didn't they come from Another Dimension?

"It's an apprentice thing," Troper!Shirou said with a shrug, apparently not noticing the strange lapse in continuity. "You want to apprentice a kid, you have to go to his parents."After disappearing for a moment to go to the front door, he came back with nice looking, older couple. However, going by looks alone they couldn't have been that much older. The man looked like he was still in his thirties, and the woman looked like she was in her early twenties! Seriously, no woman who has a teenage son had any right looking that young!

"Ara ara, what's all this ruckus?" Miya walked back into the room with a tray full of cups and a tea pot. She surveyed the chaos and said "It seems that the guests haven't been made aware that there is no violence in the Izumo House."

Darkness from the outer reaches of the universe began to coalesce around the landlady, forming into a black curtain of pure malice and doom. From this aura of endless night came a mask bearing the grotesque visage of a Hannya, its tongue curled around a dagger which promises sorrow and eyes weeping tears of crimson. This mask was soon joined by another from the void, and then another, and then another until the landlady was backed by a legion faces, all of which promising despair with no chance of hope.

Needless to say, the room quieted pretty quickly after that. The only one spared from the horror was Touma, and that was because he was at the bottom of a pile of girls at the time. Oddly enough it was Touma's father that seemed the most affected, turning white and saying to Miya "Yo-you're not perchance my wife's long lost sister are you?"

"Ara ara," His wife said in a sweet voice, "You think the strangest things."

Things managed to settle down after that, with pleasantries being exchanged, explanations given, and tea being consumed. Touma's father, whose name I learned was Touya Kamijou, seemed to particularly enjoy it.

"Ah Miya-san, this tea is excellent!" He said. He added with a smile "And it's made even better being severed by a lovely woman like yourself."

The landlady blushed slightly at this comment. However, Touya's wife Shiina was far less pleased with the comment. "Touya-san, you doing it again." She said in a sweet voice that was not at all indicative of the dark aura of malice gathering around her in a manner very similar to Miya's own Demon Head projection.

While the rest of us were busy being terrified, Miya simply giggled at the display. "Ara ara, men can be so thoughtless to their wives sometimes."

"Ara ara." Shiina agreed.

"Ara ara." Both women said in perfect unison.

"Uh, let's move on shall we?" Troper!Shirou asked nervously, mildly unnerved at how well the two women who could summon embodiments of doom were getting along.

"Alright." Touma said. He paused for a moment then asked uncertainly "Um… so what exactly should I do?"

"First thing first," Troper!Shirou said. "We need to add all of the extra Sekirei to your harem. Normally their biological impulses would lead them to imprinting on someone else, so we'll need a way to overpower it."

I nodded in resignation. "I'll get the Bar."

"No, no, that only works for you." My counterpart said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Fortunately, Touma here has his own method for adding girls to his harem. Apparently his Chronic Hero Syndrome has an extra side effect of making any girl he saves fall for him. So all he has to do is save all the Sekirei from trouble."

I arched an eyebrow in doubt. "But none of the Sekirei are in trouble right now. Not only that, there are several dozen which he would need to save. What do you suggest, just waiting around until each and every one of them is in danger?"

I felt an all too familiar sense of dread as I saw a smile slowly spread on Troper!Shirou's face. "Oh, don't worry," he said, the glint of madness present in his eyes.

"Oh dear god no…" whispered in horror.

"I have a plan!" my counterpart said in triumph.

I gave an explosive groan, knowing that this could only end badly (for me anyway). Troper!Shirou opened his mouth to begin explaining his plan which no doubt ignored all laws of logic and some of causality

_WARNING_

when suddenly my doppelganger seized for a moment, his eyes going wide in surprise. His right hand reached up to grasp the back of his neck, and when it came away he was holding a silver thread between his fingers, one end going into the back of his neck and the other trailing off into nothingness.

"What the…? What the

_MENTAL_

hell is that?" I asked. I then noticed that everything in the room seemed… off. No one else seemed to notice the sudden change in Troper!Shirou's demeanor. Not only that, they all seemed

_INCURSION_

distant or unreal, like some kind of memory I had trouble remembering. "What's going on?"

_DETECTED_

"It seems someone is trying to invade our mind." He said, still looking at the thread between his fingers with a serious expression.

"Huh?" I said in confusion. "What do you mean 'our'?"

"Well, really I mean yours which by extension means mine and-" He sighed in exasperation. "You know what? I'm not going over this again. I've explained this to you half a dozen times already but you always forget when you wake up and right now I really don't have time to explain it." As he said this, he began wrapping the thread around his hand.

"Wake up? You mean I'm… dreaming?" Normally I would have brushed this of as Troper!Shirou just spouting crazy nonsense again, but for the moment it actually seemed plausible. Things around me had started to become disjointed and surreal while I was talking to him, with the walls and furniture being incorrectly proportioned and objects coming apart at the seams.

"Yes, and from the prospective of someone else no less." Troper!Shirou said with an amused look. "It gave me a rather interesting opportunity to be you for a while. Unfortunately though, it seems we're going to have to cut today's session short so I can deal with this." He planted his feet in a steady stance. "I need to drag whoever's doing this into the deeper part of your mind. You can't exactly follow and keep your sense of self while there, so mind the shift from first person to third." Without further preamble, he gave strong pull on the silver thread in his hand and suddenly I was

Nowhere

As Troper!Shirou pulled on the thread, the room came apart with it, the walls and floors separating and drifting off into the white void that now surrounded everything. Words and concepts floated through the void as well, with connection and references between them constantly shifting and changing. This was the center of a certain state of mind, an alien view point which no human should have. Such a thing was referred to as a Reality Marble by those humans who practice the art of Thaumaturgy, who also referred to themselves as magi. As things would have it, one such magus appeared in existence inside this Reality Mable, stumbling forward as the length of silver thread currently grasped in his and was being pulled on by Troper!Shirou.

"What the devil?" the man said in surprise, clearly not expecting this turn of events. He was an arrogant looking man, wearing old fashioned and formal cloths, with black hair and hawkish features similar to another man who was likely busy with his own problems at the moment. The man stared at Troper!Shirou with indignant rage and said. "What have you done? I should be able to bypass your conscious mind completely in your current state. How have you brought me here?"

The younger man opposite to him 'tisked' and said "I was able to bring you here because you forgot the first rule of psychic combat: any door you open can be traversed both ways. I merely followed your connection back to your mind and pulled it into his." He said, gesturing around him. He frowned. "Well, technically it's my mind too. I'm never sure what pronoun I should use."

The magus gawked for a moment before saying "What are you going on about? That shouldn't have mattered because you're _unconscious_. How could a third rate magus like yourself possible be aware of what I'm doing?"

"Well," Troper!Shirou gestured awkwardly for a moment before continuing. "That's mostly because I'm not Shirou Emyia's conscious mind. Hell, I'm not entirely sure what I am: his subconscious mind, the Anthropomorphic Personification of his Reality Marble, his Id, or maybe just a thinly veiled rip off of Dresden's subconscious from the _Dresden Files_." He said with a smile. "Personally, I just think of myself as Troper!Shirou."

The magus blinked in confusion for a moment. "How did you pronounce the exclamation point?"

"Don't worry it," Troper!Shirou said with dismissive wave of his hand. A serous expression crossed his face. "What you should worry about is that you are poking around where you don't belong."

The magus gave an unimpressed grunt. "Bah, you're clearly insane. It doesn't matter, I am Peter Eltanwise and I will not be demeaned in such matter by a third rate magus like yourself!" And with that, he thrust out his hand still holding the silver thread and a red light emitted along its length, heading to where the other end of the string was still imbedded in the younger man's neck. Curiously, as he did so, some of the words and floating in the void moved from their normal position and seemed to wrap around the red light. If one was trained properly and focused enough, they would have been able to make out the words Psychic Link and Mental Manipulation.

In a likewise fashion, before the light could reach Troper!Shirou, more words darted out from the void and placed themselves in front of him. If the same hypothetical person with training and focus were to give it a look, they would have seen the words No Sell shaped conspicuously like a shield. When the light reached the younger man, it merely dissipated with no effect.

"What?" Eltanwise said incredulously. "Impossible!"

"You really think you could possibly control all this?" Troper!Shirou said with a smirk, gesturing to the endless number of tropes floating within the white void. "Usually I'm not very good at the offensive part of psychic combat, but the inside of this mind is a labyrinth which you could not possibly hope to understand." He paused for a moment before continuing. "Do you know what his distortion is?"

Eltanwise was caught off guard by the apparent non sequitur. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Quite a bit for your immediate future I'm afraid. I could spend quite some time going into the details about it, but to sum it up, it would be 'All is Fiction'. To him everything everywhere is a story, even his own life." Troper!Shirou gave a chuckle. "I'm afraid I was wrong when I said I don't know what I am, because I do know one thing about myself. Shirou has turned the idea of the Fourth Wall into a pseudo-philosophical metaphor for the barriers between dimensions, but that is an ideal tempered by logic of the reality around him." The Troperiffic man gave a grin. "I however have no part in any reality outside of this, and so am not limited by it. Which means not only can I truly Break the Fourth Wall, I know exactly who my author is too."

The magus just stared at him in bafflement, barely understanding what he was talking about. "You're insane." He concluded simply.

"True, but if I wasn't I wouldn't exist." was Troper!Shirou's somewhat circular reply. "Of course, you attempted to read the mind of someone who you had to have known was a Reality Marble user, which are by definition insane. I guess that means you're an idiot." The younger man shook his head. "Anyway, my question to you is this: how would you like to see the world from my perspective?" And with the he grabbed the thread between them and-

No Fourth Wall

Imagine if you will a curtain which has been kept in front of you your entire life, such that while you don't even notice it, it is still a comfortable point of reference to your awareness. Now imagine that curtain being forcibly ripped away from you, shedding a horrible new light into your eyes, showing things you at first don't understand and fear. Then as your learn to focus on what's beyond the curtain your fear doesn't abate but intensifies, for you can feel things watching you, but it's not just watching. You can feel them judging, evaluating, analyzing every last piece of your existence and eventually dismissing you as insignificant to some grand overall scheme which you don't know. Imagine that just when you think that existence can't possibly be worse, you somehow realize with utter horror and finality that the gaze of these thing which deem you as a tiny piece in some unfathomable game are the only reason you currently exist, and for them to stop watching you would return you to the void from which you came.

That would be an approximate summation of what a character would feel if they suddenly had their fourth wall removed and didn't have the kind of mind that could handle it.

Needless to say, Eltanwise began screaming. "WHAT ARE THEY! WHAT ARE THOSE THINGS WATCHING ME!"

"Readers." Troper!Shirou said simply. Somehow this explanation failed to comfort the magus and he continued to rave incoherently. Troper!Shirou walked forward to the terrified man. "It gets even worse for you though, because I happen to know what the author likes. He just loves his Happy Endings, and in this story you're a villain. And in a story with a Happy Ending," Troper!Shirou stopped in front of the man. "The villain always loses!" With that he gave a mighty forward kick to the magus's midsection, and Eltanwise was promptly launched out of the mindscape.

For a moment, all was still within the white void. Then Troper!Shirou looked at his watch and said "Oh, better start getting this place ready. It's my turn to host poker night and I do _not_ want put Deadpool next to Ajimu-san again."


	17. Chapter 12: Everything Else can Wait

I took out my phone as I hustled down the hallway, dialing my mother's number as I did so. She barely got out a hello before I interrupted her. "Takami, things haven't exactly gone as planned."

"What happened?" She asked.

"I don't know how or when, but Higa managed to get in contact with those people I was telling you about earlier." I said, not want to talk directly about the Clock Tower over the phone. "Long story short, those people are here, some people are dead, Higa's escaped, and I still don't know where Yukari is."

I heard an angry growl from the other end of the line. "I'm contacting MBI's assault and clean up teams. They'll be there in 10 minutes. I swear, if those medieval bastards did anything to her-"

"I'm going to find her, Mom." I interrupted, cutting her off before she could begin her rant in earnest. "I promise." I soon found myself back in the room where I had left Homura, Kazehana and Benitsubasa. The three of them were still on the floor, but they were now sitting up and seemed to be recovering. "Takami, I have to go. I'll be counting on those reinforcements." I hung up before she could say anything else. She may be mad at me later for how terse I had been, but I really didn't have time to fully explain things at the moment. "Do you think you can walk?" I asked the assorted Sekirei in front of me.

"We'll manage." Homura said, shakily getting to his feet. "Never mind that. Did you get Higa?"

I gave a grimace. "No. Uzume helped him escape."

"What?" Homura replied in shock. "Why would she do that? And for that matter, what was she doing here to begin with?"

I sighed. "I don't know. It could be that she always worked for him as a sort of outside contractor, but that still doesn't really explain why she would do it in the first place. She made it clear that hated the man."

"She did it for the one reason Sekirei do anything." Kazehana suddenly said. Turning to her, I saw she had a sad, knowing look on her face. "Love."

I looked at her in puzzlement for a brief moment. Then realization hit me like a freight train.

"Aaaargh!" I screamed out in frustration at my own stupidity. "Higa has her Ashikabi hostage!" Looking back, it seemed almost obvious in retrospect. I had thought her tactics as the Veiled Sekirei were simply a way of protecting her hospitalized Ashikabi, but it would also be just the kind of thing Higa would do to eliminate the competition. For that matter, I had already suspected Higa had a number of Sekirei under his employ through the use of threatening their respective Ashikabi. Why didn't I think to check if the safety of the very vulnerable companion of one of my house mates was compromised?

"Wait, you knew?" Homura shot the wind Sekirei an accusing glace.

"I suspected." She replied. "For all her slinking about during the Sekirei Plan, she didn't seem particularly happy with what she was doing. It wasn't until just now that I realized who was responsible."

Whatever Homura's response was, it was cut off Benitsubasa saying "Yeah, that's great, whatever. Now on to more important things, like WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"

My Sekirei stared at her angrily, but I simply said "She has a point. We can talk about this later. Right now, we need to focus on regrouping and finding Yukari." I gave the red Sekirei a wary eye, not sure how much she knew about the magi. The video Takami showed me only showed Karasuba in the raid against the Clock Tower warehouses. It was possible that she didn't even know that the organization that was abducting the Sekirei had extra-normal abilities, or maybe just didn't know the extent of them. For now, I decided to settle on being vague. "As for what's going on, it seems Higa made a deal with the people who have been taking the Sekirei of late."

Benitsubasa's eyes widened at this. "Wait, how do you know about the abductions?" she asked with suspicion in her voice.

"A little bird told me." I remarked, sure she take that to mean I had used Matsu to find out. I'm not sure if it mattered, but I didn't want her to find out that Takami had been supplying me with insider information. "Anyway, the other team ended up running into trouble of their own, so they've become separated as well. I've called Takami and she's sending MBI forces as we speak, but at the moment we're all vulnerable."

Homura nodded at my assessment. "Well, it shouldn't be too hard to see where the rest of our party went." He said, waving his hand back towards the hallway were we had become separated. "Just follow the trail of destruction."

* * *

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that a fight between magi and superhuman aliens could cause so much damage, but by the time we reached the 5 ruin of a room, I was starting to worry for the structural integrity of the building. In addition to the mangled furniture, whole walls were missing, not to mention several holes in both the floor and ceiling. Given the size of them, it was likely the fight ended up moving to different floors. The thing that was most prominent though was the ice. There were very few surfaces on this floor that weren't covered in frost or had very large, sharp icicles sticking out of them. This was likely the result of both Akitsu and Tsukiumi using their abilities in concert with each other. The results of their powers were once again something truly humbling to behold, especially considering that walls and furniture weren't the only things we found damaged in their wake.

Kazehana had a surprisingly calm expression on her face as she kicked a severed arm out of her path. So far, the wind Sekirei hadn't given much regard for the numerous bodies we had come across. It was likely that her time in the first Disciplinary Squad had gotten her used to such grisly sights of death. Homura wasn't taking it quite as well, a somewhat sick expression on his face. Nevertheless, he still checked very body we came across to see if they were alive. Surprisingly, a few were, although they were in bad shape, either with many wounds, encased in ice, or both. As their wounds were serious enough that the odds of them surviving the next hour were slim to none, I decided not to kill them then in there. It might have been the more practical thing to do, but I was reluctant to kill helpless person in front of the two members of my flock. Although, I don't think Benitsubasa would have minded too much…

"Man, this is awesome!" The red Sekirei exalted, surveying the carnage around her with a disturbing amount of glee. "I always love to see Karasuba's handiwork, but whichever one of yours has the ice powers is something else."

As she leaned forward to inspect an Enforcer that had been pinned to the wall by icicles, I grimaced and thought of Akitsu. I had already seen firsthand the results of the snow woman's anger when it came to my safety, and the fact that she had been separated from me by these people likely hadn't done them any favors. I had no doubt she could (and would) tear this entire building down piece by piece in order to find me. After seeing all this, I was starting to worry about how she was handling this emotionally.

For that matter I was worried how all my Sekirei were handling this level of brutality. It was unlikely I'd have to worry about Kazehana or Homura. The wind Sekirei seemed to be able to deal with it just fine, and while the fire Sekirei wasn't used to it, he had a better grasp on the nature of the world in the people in it that most. He understood it and could deal with it. Akitsu… well, her actions said more than her words ever would on this particular matter. No, the two I was really worried about were Musubi and Tsukiumi. For all of Musubi's love of battle, she still had a very innocent air about her. I was not sure how she would handle this level of brutality from one of her flock members. Then again, she was friends with Karasuba, so maybe I'm worrying over nothing. Tsukiumi on the other hand may be shocked to see that being the strongest doesn't mean as much if there are people in this world willing to go to these lengths.

I was suddenly cut out of my musings by a scream from where I had come from. It sounded female, and familiar. Yukari!

I immediately took off as fast as my reinforced legs would take me, the Sekirei falling in suit behind me. In a few moments we reached the large office room where I had fought Eltanwise, and standing in the hallway looking in with a look of horror on her face was Yukari. "Yukari!" I yelled, jumping in front of her with Kanshou and Bakuya, ready to face anything that might be threading my little sister. I was surprised for a moment when I saw that the room was just how I left it, but then I realized she had been staring at the mess that used to be the magus. For all my worrying about my Sekirei, I forgot about how my sister would react if she saw the aftermath of battle.

"O-onii-chan?" I heard Yukari say from behind me. Turning around, I saw her looking at me with uncertain eyes. Particularly, she was looking at the two oversized Chinese sabers in my hands. While she had heard of my violent past, to see me standing there with some rather large weapons and holding myself like I knew how to use them was very jarring given her normal mental image of me cooking or doing house work. "What are you doing here?"

"Are you alright?" I asked instead. Her eye's flicked back into the room for a moment before coming back to me. She gave me a hesitant nod and I sighed in relief. "Good, I'm here to get you out of here." I said, touching her shoulder (carefully, I was still holding the swords) and pushing her gently, moving her so she couldn't see Eltanwise's remains. I had a number of questions for her, but at the moment I asked "How did you escape? Did one of my Sekirei find you?"

"N-no." She stuttered briefly before taking a moment to compose herself. "It was Sakura-san. When all the noises started, Sakura came into my room, and told me now was my chance to escape as all the people who were guarding me were busy." That's right, Yukari still thinks Rin is named Sakura. I guess she somehow got away from her captors and continued the search for my sister without the rest of Troper's group. Yukari continued. "I asked her to come with me but she was acting weird and she…" she trailed of looking down the hallway at the destruction the fight caused. "Onii-chan, what's going on? Why does this place look like a war zone?"

"Yukari, I'll explain later. Right now, I want you go with Homura and get out of the building. MBI forces are on their way and should be here shortly, they'll keep you safe." She tried to speak up but I shushed her. "Right now I need you to do what I say. Can you please do that for me?" She hesitated for a moment before she reluctantly nodded. I turned to the fire Sekirei. "Take her out the back of the building, but stay out of sight until MBI arrives. We don't know who might still be lurking around."

Homura nodded and gently grasped her hand, leading the two of them to the stairwell and out of sight. I took the radio off my belt and press the talk switch. "Troper, I've found Yukari. I'm sending her out the back with Homura. By the way, MBI teams are going to be arriving soon, so make sure to stay out of sight."

There was a brief pause before I heard a reply. "Really? That's convenient, I just found Shiina. They had us each locked in our own separate rooms. When word came down that things had gone out of control on the 25th floor, most of the Enforcers down here migrated upwards, and then the lot of my team made their respective breakouts." There was another brief pause before he continued. "Shiina just left to meet up with Homura and Yukari. In other news, I'm currently tracking down Seo and his twins, but I haven't seen any trace of Rin."

"Apparently she made it all the way up here at some point. She was the one who found Yukari." I said, walking back in the direction I was going before.

"Huh. How did she get up there so fast? Is she with you now?"

I frowned to myself. "No. Yukari wasn't specific, but apparently Rin didn't stick with her for some reason."

"That doesn't sound right." Troper replied. "I'll have to have a talk with her about that."

"Well, keep searching." I said, and hung the radio back on my belt.

* * *

It was about two minutes and 3 floors down later that I final found the rest of my party. It seems were ended up going around each other in circles for a little bit before spotted one another. Well, before Akitsu spotted me anyway. One moment I was walking down the hall and the next a blur of white jumped in front of me, causing me to nearly attack it out of reflex. "Master, are you alright?" While she said this, her head was tilted downward, her eyes nervously flicking between my gaze and the ground.

If I were still my 16 year old self, I probably wouldn't have understood why she was acting like this, but given my age and experience with Akitsu, is was fairly obvious what she was feeling: shame. She felt that she had failed in her duty to protect me when the bounded field cut us off from one another.

I put my hand on her shoulder. "I'm fine Akitsu, and it wasn't your fault. I should have thought of the possibly that magi could have been involved." I gave her a reassuring smile. "You did well clearing out the building."

There was a brief moment of hesitation before she looked back at me and nodded, then followed by a swift movement placing her in her usual position back and to the left of me. Say what you will about the snow woman, but given the proper reassurance, she put her own feelings aside fast.

"Shirou-san!" was the only warning I had before I felt the ever familiar sensation of two soft globes of flesh wrapping themselves around my head. Doing my best not to flail around with a sword in each hand, I managed to tilt my head so that my vision could see more than cleavage related darkness and I could see the rest of my group coming towards me. Sans Musubi of course, who was at the moment trying to asphyxiate me with her love pillows.

"Mu-su-bi!" Tsukiumi ground out, stomping up next to the enthusiastic bear Sekirei. "You always do this! You always take advantage of these situations to get close to Shirou!" As the two settled into one of their usually arguments, I felt somewhat relived and surprised by their normal behavior give all that's happened. Maybe my worrying over the stress of such brutal fighting was unneeded?

I didn't have long to think about it, as a moment later I heard. "Ah, Shiroui-chan, you sure know how to show a girl a good time." Readjusting myself, I managed to get a better look at Karasuba, who was walking towards me. The black Sekirei was covered in blood (most assuredly not her own) and was looking quite pleased with herself, like the predator after a difficult kill. The sight was quite jarring compared to the back and forth Musubi and Tsukiumi were engaged in, though they did stop the moment the saw Karasuba approach. Tsukiumi had a noticeable scowl on her face as she approached, and even Musubi seemed a little uncomfortable seeing her friend in her current state.

"I aim to please." I replied dryly. "In any case, I found Yukari a short while ago, and she was escorted out of the building. And by the sound it," I theatrically cocked my head to the side, indicating the sound of helicopters that was steadily growing louder, "MBI is going to be here any second. So I guess that's it."

"Aw, don't be like that," Karasuba said in a coy manner that might have been endearing if her current appearance wasn't so macabre. "They rest of these oddities may have fled like rats when the saw things weren't going the way they wanted, but I'm sure you and I could find something fun to do…" Her voice had taken on an oddly seductive quality to it, which made it all the more unsettling given that her idea of 'fun' most assuredly involved copious amounts of violence. I was somewhat surprised though when she turned her gaze to Akitsu and said "I'll even consider letting bring a friend. I never knew she was so… interesting."

I tried to ignore the rather twisted threesome implications by focusing on the fact Karasuba seemed to have taken an interest in Akitsu. It wasn't surprising now that I thought about it: not only did the snow woman show her that she was massively powerful, but also that she was capable of killing without hesitation as well. Given Karasuba's love of fighting, I was starting to worry she might just engage Akitsu right now to see just how strong she was.

For her part, Akitsu merely gave a glance at the black Sekirei before returning to her usual study of me. I saw the slightest hint of irritation cross Karasuba's face at this, as it seemed this was not the reaction she wanted from the snow woman. She was used to reactions like Musubi's friendship, Miya's scorn, and my own wary caution. Akitsu on the other hand seemed to simply dismiss her as irrelevant, and it was not a response Karasuba enjoyed.

Oddly enough, it was Benitsubasa that broke the tension that had settled around the group. "Karasuba, stop flirting with him and let's go! There's no one else left to fight and Takami will be pissed if you end up hurting him."

"… I'm a little tired." Haihane added. In truth, the blue Sekrei did look a little worse for wear.

Karasuba blinked in surprise at her two subordinates for a moment before giving a small chuckle to herself and relaxing her posture. She then proceeded to walk past me, not sparing me or my Sekirei a second glance. As her two subordinates feel in line, she said "I'm looking forward to our next date, Shiroui-chan."

I tried to suppress a shudder as she walked out of sight. That woman had issues.

* * *

Ten minutes later I found myself still wandering through the building, but now I was alone. Shortly after the meeting with Karasuba, everyone regrouped with the MBI forces to do a head count. Troper had managed find Seo 'fighting' with No. 22 and No. 31. He put the word fighting in finger quotes and the only elaboration he would give on it was that 'it was closer to sexual harassment than combat.' I decided I didn't want to know.

In any case, Takami had come along with the strike teams and last I saw of her she was comforting her daughter. I'm sure that normally my adventurous little sister could have shrugged of her kidnapping like it was a minor inconvenience, but the sight of gore had still shaken her up a bit. I was certain she would be fine, but I was glad Takami was looking after her while I searched for Rin.

For whatever reason, she still hadn't turned up, even with all of the MBI personnel currently searching the building for any remaining magi. It was at the point that Troper was starting to get worried, so I added myself and my Sekirei to the search, having the lot of us spread out.

I was on the 26th floor checking around some cubicles when I noticed that something was off. I turned around in confusion a few times, trying to pinpoint the discrepancy my sense were telling me was there. I finally found it in the form of a closed office door which my eyes had trouble focusing on. Inhaling deeply through my nose, I smelled the faintest sent of magic coming from the door. _It must be a bounded field to prevent people from noticing it_, I thought to myself. _It must have been made quickly, otherwise I would never had a chance of perceiving it. Still__, pretty impressive all things considered_. I briefly considered my options before Tracing Kanshou and Bakuya. It was likely whoever was in there was waiting for MBI to leave so that they could make their escapes, and considering the skill it must have taken to set up the field on such short notice, I doubted I'd be able to sneak by it. That left one option: Knock down the door, and try to take them out before they knew what was going on.

I took a moment to ready myself. Then, I charged forward, kicking the door inward with swords at the ready, prepared to Trace and launch more if the target was out of range… and promptly found myself staring at a _Gandr_ charged finger in my face.

Both Rin and I started in surprise, apparently neither of us expecting the other. "Oh, it's you." I said, breathing out a tension relieving sigh as I did so. It was silly that I didn't consider that Rin was the one who made the bounded field. If she was anything like my Rin, she definitely had the skill to do so. "Troper's been looking all over for you. The building's clear now, so let's go."

I made to turn around, but I then noticed that Rin's look of surprise hadn't changed. If anything, she looked even more shocked, with her figure still pointing at me (sans _Gandr_ thankfully) and her jaw dropping open. I paused in confusion for a moment before asking "Rin, what's wrong?"

Her expression of shock slowly turned to one of anger, and I felt a very nostalgic sense of doom creep over me. "What's wrong?" she ground out between clenched teeth. "Six month… six months since we last saw each other and the first this you say to me is 'Oh, it's you'?"

I blinked in confusion as I stared at her. Six months? What was she talking about? The last time I saw her was an hour ago. Hell, she wasn't even in this dimension that long ago, let alone had seen me when I… was… fleeing…

My swords dropped out of my hands.

Oh.

_Oh_.

"Shirou?" Slowly turning my head to the startled cry to my left, I saw Saber standing there looking at with wide eyes. I would later learn that she had been scouting the building for enemy presence while her master hid, but the logistics of how and why the two were currently here were pushed out of my mind by two more pressing facts:

1. The women standing in front of me were my Rin and Saber.

2. Judging by the look in Rin's eyes and the _Gandr_ currently gathering on her finger, my near future was looking completely screwed.

"Stupid Shirou!" Rin yelled, and fired the first of many curses in my direction.

The next two minutes were something of a blur of pain, dark bolts of magic and me running desperately through hallways to get away from the tiny magus's wrath. It could only image the scene would have looked rather amusing from the outside, because for some reason I swear I could hear music playing while all this was going on. It sounded an awful lot like the music that accompanied the chase scenes preformed by a certain English comic I had seen on Matsu's tablet. I think it was called Yakety Sax. In any case, I was sure that this was somehow Troper's fault.

Speaking of my counterpart, the chase ended when I turned a corner and ended up colliding with the man, sending us both sprawling to the floor. "Shirou, what hell?" He asked, pulling himself to his feet. "I heard screaming and I ran here as fast as I could. What's-" He was suddenly cut short when Rin and Saber rounded the corner after me, collided with him and the four of us ended up in a heap together.

After some more cursing on Rin's part the four of us got to our feet. Troper was still wearing his bandana and hat, so my two former lovers didn't recognize him at first glance. Troper on the other hand…

He was quite close to Saber when both straightened and looked at each other, she looking at him in suspicion and he looking at her with shock that had mirrored Rin's when she first saw me. There was a brief pause before he swiftly wrapped her in an embrace, much to the confusion of the blonde swordwoman. What seemed to confuse her more was that she didn't immediately shake him off, and why he seemed so familiar.

Of course, Rin and I were less confused about how we felt about him hugging her. "Hey!" we both said.

Slower than I would have liked, he released his embrace from Saber, a look of shame and embarrassment in his eyes. "I'm… sorry. I shouldn't have done that." He looked off to the side. "You're not her."

"Just who the hell are you?" Rin shouted at Troper. "And what did you think you were doing with her?"

He paused for a moment as if trying to gather his thoughts, but then just shrugged and removed his bandana and hat. "My name is Shirou Emyia," he said, Rin and Saber gasping in surprise at his appearance. "And I take it that you're his Rin and Saber?"

"…What?" Rin yelled in response to the absurdity in front of her. She pointed at the two of us. "You two. Start explaining. Now."

"Zelretch." We both said at the same time.

Rin opened her mouth… and then closed it. She opened it again, lifting a finger up… and closed it again, looking down at the floor with a look of deep concentration on her face. I'm not sure if she was trying to figure out if that was plausible or if she was deciding to just blast us both for such a terse answer.

"You… probably want some time alone with them." Troper said, nervously watching Rin as she started to mutter ominously to herself. "In any case, with this little revelation, I'm pretty sure I know what happened to my Rin, but we can talk about that later." With a final glance at Saber, he turned and walked away.

I looked at Saber, who's normally stoic face was a mixture of emotion. Oh god, what I supposed to say to them? There was so much going on, so many things that had happen, so many things they needed to know, so many things I wanted to say. "Saber, I-"

I was suddenly cut off by Saber grabbing me by the collar and kissing me deeply. I was surprised for a moment, before instinct and emotion overwhelmed everything else and I embraced her, returning the kiss with just as much passion.

"Hey!" Rin said, snapping out of her muttering. "Stop that! We're still mad at him for-" I promptly cut her off by breaking the kiss with Saber and giving her one as well, wrapping an arm around her body. She squirmed indignantly for a moment before giving in and returning the kiss in kind. As we broke apart, she put her head against my chest, and a small sniffle escaped from her. "Stupid Shirou," I heard her mumble into my shirt. "I missed you."

"I missed you too." I said, as tears began to well up in my eyes. "And you." I added, putting my forehead against Saber's. She smiled at me as I did so, her own eyes beginning to water with tears.

The three of us stood there in the hallway, embracing each other, too overwhelmed with the moment to say anything else.

I knew that wouldn't be the end of it.

I knew that things would be hard later.

But right then, at that moment, we had each other, and all was right with the world again.


	18. Chapter 13: Exposition With a Vengeance

"So, let me get this straight," Rin said as she cradled he forehead in her hand. "After fleeing England and coming here, you by pure coincidence found your long lost family, by pure accident stumbled into this demented war between super powered alien females all orchestrated by sociopathic man-child, and by pure bloody minded stupidity ended up marrying several of the aforementioned alien females before realizing you were participating in a mating ritual?"

I had to bite my lip to keep myself from automatically responding, but unfortunately Musubi took up the call in my stead. "He's also incredibly good looking, too!"

I sighed as Rin's eyebrow twitched, all the while the rest of my Sekeri nodded in agreement with Musubi's statement. All things considered, things had been going fairly well since Rin, Saber and I left the Izumi international building. Though I still wasn't clear on just how much my former lovers new about the current situation, they apparently knew enough that they weren't pleased when they realized that all the women who greeted me outside the building were my Sekirei. Fortunately, I managed to convince them to come back to the inn with me to explain everything after only a relatively small amount of yelling on Rin's part.

Unfortunately, the amount of yelling drastically increased when Tsukiumi, as she frequently did, asserted how the bond between Ashikabi and Sekirei is equivalent to one of marriage halfway back. The rest of the trip back was… unpleasant needless to say.

In any case, things calmed down after we all got back to the inn (and it's Table of Exposition as Troper liked to call it) and I managed to explain the series of events that led into my current situation. During my explanation, Rin had managed to calm down enough to let me talk, although she frequently interrupted to ask me questions. Saber on the other hand had mostly remained silent, though she did have a small frown on her face the whole time (that is, when she wasn't eating copious amounts of the diner Miya prepared or give the landlady speculative glances for some reason). While not as vocal about it as the tiny magus, she was not particularly happy about it ether.

Rin gave me a frustrated look. "You know, if you were anyone else, I probably would have beaten them senseless for telling me such a ridiculous and unbelievable story as to how it wasn't their fault that they married a bunch of cow chested bimbos." She ignored the indignant squawks from around the table as she continued, putting her face into her hand. "But you, you truly are so dense that you can have women literally throwing themselves at you and still not get the hint, aren't you?"

"Indeed," Saber added. "I might not be the best at understanding romantic intentions, but even I would have figured it out sooner."

I grimaced at their frank assessment. "Nice to know that being obtuse makes me more believable. Now that we've gone through the absurdity that has been my past six month, how about we talk about yours? Namely, what are you doing here?"

"Oh no, we're not moving off the topic off your 'wives' that easily." Rin said with a glare. "And furthermore, you still haven't given a good explanation as to who the hell that other you was."

I surpressed a sigh as I silently wished Troper was here so that he could both explain who he was to her and distract her from being mad at me. However, shortly before our group left for the Izumo House, he said that he needed to track down his Rin and that he would be out for the rest of the night doing so. When I asked him if he thought that the Clock Tower had captured her, he just gave a small chuckle and remarked that if they had her as a captive, they were probably regretting it by now. "He's an alternate dimensional version of me who is apprenticed to Zelretch and was dropped off in this dimension by Zelretch because the sorcerer found it amusing. What more of an explanation do you need?"

"You could start with why he felt the need to embrace me when we first met." Saber said.

I paused for a moment, trying to think of the best way to explain such a sensitive subject which I had limited information on. "He… missed you." I said. Saber gave me a look of confusion and I continued. "I honestly can't really tell you that much about it because he doesn't like to talk about it, but he and his Rin… lost their version of you at some point." The blonde swordswoman's eyes widened at this. "I can only guess that at seeing you so suddenly, his emotions got the better of him."

Rin and Saber were quiet for a moment, both understanding the pain of being separated from the one you love. I did not tell them that his situation might not be so different that what the three of ours was until today, however. I wasn't supposed to know that Troper and his Rin were looking for their Saber, though I still wasn't sure what happened to her. As such, I didn't feel it was my place to tell Rin and Saber about it.

I decided that we should move on from the subject. "Look, I don't think it would be right for me to talk about it anymore without him here. Besides, anything else you would want to know about him he'd have a better time explaining anyway. So, can we please talk about what you're doing in Shin Tokyo?" I had a few assumptions about why they were here given the situation and a few bits of stray information I had picked up during my fight with Eltanwise, but I wanted to be sure.

Rin paused for a moment before she began talking. "About a week ago I was contacted by one of Eltanwise's retainers with a proposition. He said that Eltanwise was currently working on a project in Japan and had suddenly found himself shorthanded. I know that I wasn't the only one who was extended such an offer, but I was picked in particular for my experience with the area." Of course by area, she meant Japan in general rather than the city. Considering how few Asians there are in the Clock Tower and how skilled Rin was as a magus, it's unsurprising she was chosen. "In exchange for my aid, I would get a certain amount of political weight within the Clock Tower."

I gave a nod, this basically confirming what I suspected. "Did he tell you what he was doing?"

"Not in detail." She responded. "All that was said what the he was researching some kind of new magical species. In any case, I accepted as the favors Eltanwise offered would have been useful in going toward getting your Sealing Designation removed, and it seemed like a good chance to visit my homeland while we were at it."

Saber spoke up. "It was also a good chance to try to look for you without looking suspicious." She looked to the side sheepishly. "We… thought it was likely that you returned to Japan and were hoping that we might have been able to get some leads as to your whereabouts. We both knew it was unlikely, but it was still worth trying."

"Ah, and even though you only had the slightest chance of seeing your lost lover again, you both traveled across the world without hesitation just for the possibility of being reunited!" Kazehana said dreamily, clutching a bottle of sake to her chest as she did so. "And now your hope has paid off with a destined reunion between lovers so cruelly torn apart!"

I could practically see Rin and Saber sweat drop at the wind Sekirei's rather flowery description of the three of us finding each other again. "Anyway," Rin said while looking at Kazahana, "It wasn't until we got here that we learned the details of just what the Sekirei were, though to be honest, it seems that the magi here are missing a few rather crucial bits of data regarding them." As she said this, she shifted her gaze to Tsukiumi and gave her a glare, who returned it in kind. As she was the one who was the most vocal about our status as husband and wife, Rin had taken to butting heads with her the most on the trip back to the inn. It didn't help that they were both very confrontational, so neither one was very good at backing down.

"So what exactly do they know about the Sekirei?" I asked quickly before the two of them could get into a 'tsundere-off' that would inevitably end in destruction. Not only did I want to avoid the wrath of Miya, but it was important to know just how much of a threat these people were to the Sekirei.

The small magus spare one last glare at the water Sekirei before she unconsciously adopted the 'Rin Tohsaka Lecture Position Number 1', with her right arm and index finger pointed upward and her right elbow supported with her left hand. "As far as the Clock Tower is aware, the Sekirei are species of magical creature of indeterminate extra-terrestrial origin. However, rather than thinking they are a completely separate species, they believe that all the Sekirei they've seen so far are hybrids of humans and the original creatures. They came to this conclusion due to the numerous similarities to humans they've observed in both physical appearance and the nature of their magical circuits."

I pursed my lips in thought at this. I suppose it made a kind of sense. I admittedly didn't know that much about other alien creatures, but from what little I've heard about the Types indicates that they are truly alien in both appearance and in nature. The Sekirei on the other hand are just so, well, human. A comparison could be drawn to how Dead Apostles could be seen as a sort of human/Type-moon hybrid, but that is probably not the best example as from what I've heard the True Ancestors look just like us. On the only hand, I had no idea what the original Crimson Moon was like. Really, the important thing me to realize here was that I had no experience in classifying alien organisms and should probably stop trying.

"Whatever the case may be," Rin continued, "It was determined that they are capable of with bonding with a human being in order to access more of their power, though it was thought that this relationship was more along the lines of simply symbiotic rather than… _that_." She said the last word with no small amount of ire. "Beyond that, they didn't really find out anything else. The Clock Tower doesn't understand why all the Sekirei are fighting each other or what exactly is their relationship with MBI."

"Yes, well, I'm still not quite sure what the relationship to the company is either." I remarked in annoyance. "All I already told you, the Sekirei are fighting because MBI tells them to, but I still don't have a solid motivation for it other than the Director is some kind of sadist." The man treated this battle royal like it was a game, so much so that even the Sekirei consider it as such, although they consider it a very cruel one. Sometimes I wonder why Takami didn't just shove him off the top of the building…

My train of thought stopped when I remember something from my lunch conversion with my mother. "Rin," I said, my voice becoming much harder. "Do you know what Eltanwise and his men did the Sekirei they captured?"

Rin paled, likely both at what I said and the tone I had suddenly taken. She looked down into her lap rather than answer me, her face becoming one of regret.

Saber reach over and clasped one of her hands over Rin's, giving her a reassuring smile before turning to me. "Yes, we saw the results of their experiments. We… disapproved of their methods." Saber said, clearly understating how she felt on the matter. "Rin has spent the whole time since we arrived trying to get the magi to use less destructive methods."

"But it's too late…" I heard Rin mutter. "I've known for years that the Mage's Association did things like this, but after seeing it…" She sighed and looked back up. "When we allied with Higa, I got the chance to talk to some of his Sekirei. They weren't the most sociable, but I realized that they didn't deserve what the Clock Tower was doing to them. When they brought in that Ashikabi and started talking about the experiments they would do to her, I just couldn't…" She trailed off.

I blinked in surprise as the pieces suddenly fit together in my head. "You're the one that freed Yukari?"

"Yes. My push to treat the Sekirei better had made me somewhat unpopular, such to the point that they didn't even tell that they were planning on luring you into a trap, though I suppose there were probably other reasons why they didn't tell me. In any case, when I heard the fighting start, I didn't know what was going on, but I realized that this would be the best chance to free the girl. She certainly seemed willing enough to take the chance when I met her, although the girl seemed to think my name was Sakura for some reason…" She gave me a suspicious look as I rubbed the back of my head. "Why do I suddenly think that it's your fault somehow?"

"It's… complicated." I said. I narrowed my eyes. "More importantly, I now must add 'almost vivisected my sister' to the list of reasons why the Clock Tower is going to suffer."

"Things are actually going worse for them than you think." Rin said. "Though Eltanwise kept up a strong front, this whole operation has been one failure after another. He thought it would be trivial to work around or simply overpower MBI, but they proved to be far more competent than was expected. MBI soldiers routinely managed to find their labs somehow, and the Sekirei they had directly under their employ were far more skilled that the others we encountered."

"No offense Rin-tan, but those magus guys are pretty stupid to underestimate the MBI." Matsu said. "It's the most powerful and wealthiest corporation in the world, with highly advanced technology and its own private army. Their unofficial motto is 'We only fear countries more powerful than us, and there's only three of those left'."

Rin merely grumbled at this, so I responded for her. "Magi have become very out of touch with the rest of the world. It's a natural consequence of secluding themselves to work on magecraft in secret. Not to mention the fact that they are in general rather arrogant. The end result is that they probably wouldn't even understand what the GPS locater chips implanted in the Sekirei were even if they found them."

"Locater what now?" Rin said in confusion.

"It's… a technology that allows MBI to track the Sekirei anywhere in the world." I said, simplifying things down for her.

"Eh? They can do that?" the small magus said in surprise. "How- no, nevermind I'll ask later. What's important now is how the Clock Tower will respond to this latest setback."

"What do you mean?"

"By my estimate about half of the Enforcers that have been sent to this city have been killed or seriously injured in some way. With Eltanwise dead, those remaining will likely report this to the Clock Tower Lords. Eltanwise hoped to keep this a secret until he has full control of the situation. Now it's likely the whole Clock Tower knows about the Sekirei."

"What do you think they'll do, Tohsaka-kun?" Miya asked with concern. While she still didn't quite believe that magic was real, it was good that she still considered the Mage Association a serious threat.

"I'm not quite sure," She admitted. "But believe it or not, things have the potential to get even worse. Some of the Enforcers I talked to considered all the Sekirei running around the city to be a major breach for the secrecy of magic. While they are technically wrong, the both don't know that and even if they did they would probably consider it close enough. It seems unthinkable, but they might try to silence the whole city if they think things have gone too far."

"Silence the whole city?" Homura asked. He looked confused for a moment before he paled. "Wait, you couldn't possibly mean that Blue lady Shirou was talking about?"

I lifted up my hands to placate the fire Sekirei. "Don't worry. Though she might have a temper, the Blue is not the kind of person who would blow up a major city for money." Still, I frowned to myself and looked down at the table in thought. "However, that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other… unpleasant ways they can keep even a large number of people from talking."

There was a minute of silence around the table, everyone likely wondering what these people would do. Rin finally said "So, is that enough about what we've been doing for the past six months?"

"Um, I suppose?" I said uncertainly.

"Good. Then let's move onto more important matters." She proceeded to stand up and gaze at my flock, saying "Shirou's ours and we're not letting you have him!"

I groaned and face palmed as the assembled Sekirei began to protest her claim to myself. I suppose it was stupid for me to hope that she would be a little more considerate to my flock after she heard all the details of how we ended up together.

Through the clamor I managed to hear Saber say "Rin, that is not the best way to deal this. Whatever the circumstances, these women have come to care for Shirou, so we must use a much more reasonable approach to this situation." Ah, good old reliable Saber. She was always the more reserved and reasonable of my two lovers. Surely she would have thought of a more reasonable solution than to simply lock out my flock.

Unfortunately, I realized my hopes were in vain when she said "I shall face all of you in honorable combat. The winner gets to be with Shirou." I groaned even louder and add my second hand to my face. It seems the reserved swordwoman had no intention of sharing me with the Sekirei either.

"Yay! A strong opponent!" Musubi exclaimed as she stood up and got into a fighting stance.

"Hmph." Tsukiumi added, her cloths and hair starting to flutter around her as she stood as well. "That's fine by me. I am the strongest Sekirei after all!"

"Hah! That means nothing next to Saber!" Rin exclaimed, clearly approving of this idea. "She can take you all on no problem!"

"While I appreciate your confidence, I would still prefer this to be one-on-one with each of them." Saber remarked. "Also, I have to admit that Miya-dono could prove to be challenging."

Miya, who looked like she was about to unleash her Hannya upon everyone to keep us all from fighting, suddenly blinked in surprise. "Ara, and why would we be fighting Saber-kun? I'm not one of Shirou-kun's Sekirei."

Saber frowned at this. "Really? Why aren't you? From what I understand of your species, attraction is a sign that he's your Ashikabi."

Miya looked somewhat taken back at this. "W-who said I was attracted to him."

"From what Shirou's told me, you keep his Sekirei from being with him under the rule that there are no lewd acts within your house. However, given the way I've seen you look at him, it's clear that this is merely a pretense so you can have him for yourself." Saber stated with certainly.

To my surprise, Miya actually seemed flustered by Saber's assessment. "Su-such an active imagination you have, Saber-kun…" she said with a nervous smile.

Tsukiumi on the other hand gasped at this revelation. "S-so that's why you never let me and Shirou have our wedding night!" The water Sekirei was less than happy to learn that she (supposedly) had yet another rival for my affections.

Kazehana, on the hand… "Ah, so the lonely inn keeper who lost her husband has fallen for the brave young warrior she took into her home!" She clutched the bottle to her chest again and squealed. "Oh, this is so romantic!"

Matsu was simply giggling her perverted old man laugh. "A soap opera! A soap opera I say!"

I desperately tried to think of a way to convince my flock that Miya wasn't also contending for my affections. Saber was just misreading the situation.

I mean, if she was attracted to me, I would have noticed right?

Musbui, for her part, merely cocked her head to the side in confusion. "But Akitsu-san already-" that was as far as she got before she was struck on the head with a ladle, Miya suddenly appearing behind her in a bust of speed.

"Ara ara, it looks like you're all talking about unnecessary things." The landlady said with her customary crinkled eyes and smile. "It seems I must remind you all that violence and lewdness are forbidden in the Izumo House."

As the eldest Sekirei's Hannya began to take shape, the last thing I heard before I became paralyzed was fear was Saber commenting "Hmmm, impressive."

* * *

After all the nonsense in the dinner room, Rin, Saber and I went to my room. Miya kept the rest of my flock from following, saying that the three of us need some 'private time'. Some of them complained that we use this chance to get… reacquainted with each other, but that wasn't likely for a number of reasons.

"I'm still mad at you, Shirou." Case and point.

Rin gave me a glare as she lectured me. "It's bad enough that you ran off without us, but you also somehow married several women, plus a man and a little girl too, because you were to thick headed to realize what you were doing? I hope you don't expect us to simply be fine with this and join your new harem. You're still part of mine, damn it!"

Saber nodded in agreement. "I know you were just trying to help them, but I am not pleased with the situation either."

I sighed as I looked at my two former lovers. "What am I supposed do? Just cut them loose after the Sekirei Plan is over? The winging process causes them to imprint on me, so they basically have to love me for rest of their lives. To simply reject them now would be horribly cruel."

Rin grumbled. "Well, maybe if you thought things through, you wouldn't be in this mess." She gave a grunt. "I suppose I should thank the landlady for helping you keep your chastity intact, even if she did have her own motives."

I paused for a moment to think back to the dining room. I could tell that Miya had interrupted Musubi on purpose when the latter was about to reveal how I winged Akitsu. I was a little surprised considering how she usually liked to watch me squirm when it came to my female relations. However, we managed to share a few brief glances after her lecture had ended, and the look she gave me almost looked to be one of sympathy. I could guess that the time she spent married to Takehito gave her more insight into human relations than the rest of my flock, and she knew that my former lovers shouldn't hear something like that from one of my Sekirei.

Of course, that leads into the second reason why things weren't going to go well between me, Rin and Saber tonight. She shepherded us off to my room so I could be the one to tell them about it.

"There's… something else I haven't told you yet." I said slowly.

"Oh really? What else could you have possibly done?"

I looked off to the side as I considered the best way to tell them. "Akitsu isn't, well, wasn't a normal Sekirei."

"Huh?" Rin said, taken off balance by my apparent non sequitur. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that before I met her, she was something called a scrapped number. The short version is it meant that she couldn't be winged."

Saber furrowed her brow. "Are you saying you haven't winged her either?"

"No, I have, I just couldn't do it the normal way." I replied. "They general consensus said that the reason she couldn't be winged was because she became too powerful and winged herself. However, I found that when I kissed her, she still drained my od like the other Sekirei." I saw Rin's eyebrow twitch at the mention of kissing, so I hurried up my explanation. "Anyway, I ended up using magic to figure out what the problem was."

"So, what did you find out?"

"Originally, she had a crest on her forehead, which is where my od would go to and dissipate rather than going where is was supposed to go. I have some suspicions that her crest was tampered with to cause this state, but that's not important right now. The important thing is that there was a pause between my od being absorbed into the crest and it being released."

Rin cupped her chin in her hand, switching to academic mode. "Hmm… if it was tampered with, it's probably that the people working on it didn't quite understand how od worked, and couldn't find a way to naturally release it from the body. Given the time delay, the crest likely worked like some sort of converter, changing the energy into something that they knew how to release. Of course, the flaw with that would be that there's a fixed amount such a converter could absorb, so any extra would simply overflow and do was the crest was trying to keep it from doing. Overpowering the crest in such a manner is likely the easiest way to get around it, but didn't think that you knew any-"

She suddenly stopped, her eyes going wide. "Shirou," she said in a very small voice. "How did you wing Akitsu?"

I clenched my fists as I looked down at the ground, unable to look at my Rin and Saber. Somehow, I managed to say. "I used a tantric ritual."

I expected them to shout and scream at me or even hit me (or at least for Rin to do so), but they said nothing. I finally managed to look at them, and saw their shocked expressions. There was anger in their faces to be sure, but that was small compared to the other things they were clearly feeling. Hurt.

Somehow, that made it much worse.

"Wh… Why?" Saber eventually managed to say. "Why would you do that?"

I thought back to my conversation with Troper, about how I responded to that very question, but it all faded away when I looked at the two of them. What response could I possibly give that would justify my actions to those eyes? "She deserved to be winged." was the only thing I could say.

"Deserve?" Rin said while trembling, tears beginning to well up in her eyes. "What about what we deserve? We spend months worrying about you, looking for you, and you and do _this_! " she spat out with vehemence. "What makes it worse is that you didn't do it out of affection or even lust! You did it because of your fucking sense of duty!"

"Rin-" I began.

_SLAP_. Rin hand struck my face before I could say anything else. "Damn you," she said, now openly sobbing. "How could you do this to us?" With that, she turn and ran out of the room, slamming the door open as she did so.

I turned to Saber, who simply looked back at me with tears failing down her face. I could tell that she understood why I did it. The blonde swordwoman had a strong sense of duty herself, and realized the dilemma I had found myself in.

I could tell from her face that it didn't hurt any less, though.

"You should have waited." was all she said before she turned around and took off after Rin.

I was left alone in the room, the stinging on my face from where Rin slapped being nothing compared to the pain I felt in my heart. I sat and curled up on the ground, cursing myself for hurting the women I loved so much.

I slept alone that night.


	19. Chapter 14: Pointless Fight Scene

As I sat on the porch the following morning, I felt, to put it bluntly, like shit. Sleep did not come easy last night, and the morning wasn't much better. After Rin and Saber had run out of the room I had been half afraid that they had run out of the inn altogether. Fortunately, that had not been the case, and Miya had simply set them up in a room at the other end of the inn. Aside from not wanting to be separated from them again, the city was becoming increasingly unsafe now that I knew that the Clock Tower was desperate to contain the situation. I'm not quite sure how they would respond to finding the two after their absence, but I doubted it would be good.

Of course the downside of the two of them staying in the inn was that breakfast had been an awkward affair, with the two of them refusing to come out of their rooms and my flock all confused as why things had suddenly become so bad between the three of us. The reason why my former lovers were upset with me was something I didn't think the alien women would understand, much less something I wanted to explain at the moment. It took and Asura mask to get them to stop asking questions.

I heard footsteps coming towards me, and I dully turned my head to tell them to go way. I couldn't be around any of my Sekirei at the moment (especially Akitsu) as they were the cause of problems with Rin and Saber. It wasn't their fault, and it was unfair of me to push them away but I just couldn't deal with it at the moment. However, rather than seeing one of my flock, I instead found Troper waking towards me, he himself looking somewhat disheveled. He stopped next to me, looking down at me with a critical look. "You look like hell." He said succinctly.

I snorted. "You don't happen to be in such a good state either."

"Yes, well, I was up all night and ended up nodding off on a bench for an hour or two. You on the other hand look like you were thrown into a giant washer and the spin cycle was set on 'despair'." He said, cocking his head to the side. "Miya told me that things got pretty bad between you and you other thirds last night. I'm pretty sure I can guess why."

"Oh, so now you're going to give me advice based on some terrible romantic comedy on how to get them back?" I asked with a heavy layer of cynicism.

Troper simply shook his head and extended his left hand. Looking at it, I notice it was holding two beers by the necks. I was taken by surprise for a moment before I reached out and took one of them. When I did, Troper just sat down next to me and said nothing, looking out into the garden like I was.

We sat like that for some time, taking sips from our respective drinks and watching the world go by. Oddly enough, it made me feel a little better. It had been a long time since I had a real male friend (Homura notwithstanding), but I think that this was the standard way men try to console one another when something has gone wrong in their lives. Get together, grab some beers, and shut up, because we all know nothing anyone said would make things better so why say anything at all?

Still, after about ten minutes, I couldn't hold back the comment "So that's a no, then?"

My counterpart gave a sigh. "Believe it or not, there isn't a trope for 'sleeping with an alien woman so Deus Sex Machina can fix her faulty biology so she won't feel emotionally crippled while estranged from your One True Threesome due to malevolent forces', so your guess is as good as mine on how to deal with this one."

I gave a small chuckle at that. "Maybe it's a sign that life isn't controlled by tropes."

"Bah. I refuse to believe such lies, no matter how much Rin insists otherwise."

I frowned as I remember the reason why Troper was out last night. "That reminds me, did you mange to find your Rin?"

Troper gave a frown of his own. "Yes, though I'm not happy about it. It seems in the confusion of the battle, the magi ended up taking her with them instead of yours thinking she was the one from this universe. We're just lucky that the people who captured us ended up dead before they could report that one of their own had been sneaking into the building with a bunch of shady looking characters."

"So you know where she is?"

"Yeah, it's in an office building that's being renovated downtown. Most of the magi retreated there after yesterday."

I sat up a bit straighter and a serious expression crossed my face. "So what's the plan?"

"The plan is to do nothing, apparently." He said with some annoyance. "I spend all night trying to track her down – which is not easy when she's behind a bounded field mind you – managed to infiltrate the building, sneak past all the magi to get to her, and she says she wants to stay to be a spy!"

I blinked in surprise at this "That sounds dangerous considering she doesn't know everything my Rin knows…"

"It is! And I tried to tell her such at great length but she wouldn't listen because 'we'll never get a chance like this again'."

I was about to reply before I stopped and thought for a moment. "Actually, considering what my Rin told me before… well, anyway it's probably a good idea to know what the Clock Tower will be doing next."

"Why? What did she tell you?" he asked.

I gave him a summary of what Rin told me about the Clock Tower last night. In particular I told him how they were getting desperate and some were considering drastic measures to keep things contained here in Shin Tokyo.

Troper groaned and Face Palmed. "Considering that, it probably is for the best that she stayed. But don't tell her I said that." He looked back at me. "So, just how many problems does that add up to?"

"Well, let's see" I said dryly while holding up my hand to count fingers. "Rin and Saber hate me now, your Rin is getting information in the most dangerous way possible, the Clock Tower is probably going to bring down hell upon the city, Uzume's done a Face Heel Turn because her Ashikabi is being held hostage, and let's not forget the Sekirei plan in general, of which I still don't know the purpose of or end game to." I dropped my hand down to the side as I stared despondently back at the garden. "What the hell are we going to do?"

There was a moment of silence before Troper suddenly said "I got it!"

"What?"

"Let's beat the crap out of each other!"

"…What."

* * *

"I still don't see how this solves our problems." I remarked an hour later, the two of us standing in the middle of a clearing in Osaka Park.

"It doesn't. It distracts us from our current problems, which I think will be good for both of us." Troper replied, surveying the somewhat rough field around us. Thankfully it wasn't the exact same one in which we fought the Enforcers a few weeks ago, but I was starting to feel somewhat silly coming to this park over and over again to completely destroy another part of it with collateral damage. Especially this time as there was really no reason for Troper and I to be fighting at all.

Well, I guess that wasn't quite true. When Troper finally explained that what he meant was for the two of us to have a sparring match, he also pointed out that each of us only knew the basic idea of the other's abilities. We had seen each other in combat once, and neither of us had been paying particular attention to the other. This would be a good chance to see just what each of us was capable of in combat.

"Shirou-san! Do your best against Troper-san!" From the edge of the clearing, Musubi and the rest of my Sekirei stood watching the two of us (Save Matsu, who had given them some sort of camera so she could watch the fight in real time). I was a little nervous about having them here, especially Kuu-chan. Watching me spar with the landlady was one thing, but in this fight we would both be using our magic, which could definitely cause some unintended destruction to the area around us. However, the lot of them had been very insist, so I had settled for designating Akitsu to set up barriers to protect the rest of my flock if things got out of hand. Rin and Saber had of course stayed back at the inn, with Miya looking after the two.

Turning back to Troper, I said "Ok, but I think you're forgetting the fact that we're both exhausted. There's no way this can be productive if neither of us can fight at full capacity."

"I got us covered." He said. Before I could ask him how, he walked up to me, put his hand on my shoulder and said "Triple Shifter."

There was a brief moment when I felt a foreign source of prana enter my body, but after I managed to keep my innate magic resistance from rejecting it, I suddenly felt a wave of energy enter my body, and I felt as if I actually got a good night's sleep. I blinked in surprise as I bounced up and down on my heels experimentally. "I feel great! Can you really use that trope in place of sleep?"

Troper gave an amused grunt. "It would take a lot more prana than what I just gave you to replace a good night's sleep." He said before he quietly muttered the phase again for himself. Indeed, he looked in much better shape after he did so. "This is just a temporary boost. It'll catch up to us later, trust me."

I frowned. Of course there was a price attached. "What do you mean 'catch up to us'?"

As he walked away from me, he said "Oh, we'll probably fall unconscious after we're done here, but don't worry about that right now." He stopped about 30 feet away from me and turned around. "So, are we going to start this or what?"

I gave a shrug and held out my hands. "Trace on." I spoke my simple aria as I traced Kanshou and Bakuya, Reinforcing my body as I did so. I gave a sight flourish with the blades before I settled into my standard stance with the blade pointed up at my sides.

Then a thought occurred to me. _Wait, isn't his primary weapon-_

That's as far as I got before he pulled out a revolver and shot me!

Well, almost. My sudden realization combined with my enhanced reflexes allowed me to dodge to the side in time, so the bullet merely grazed me. "Hey!" I shouted indignantly. I know that I of all people had no right to protest the use sneak attacks or a variety of weaponry, but that just seemed unfair!

"Oh come on!" Troper exclaimed. "If you had watched _Raiders of the Lost Ark_, you would have agreed that you clearly set me up for a Just Shoot Him. There was no way I could pass that up. Besides, we both have a Healing Factor, so you could shrug off a gunshot." He tossed the revolver over his shoulder and held his hands in front of him. "Invoke on." He said, and the same pair of pistols I saw him use the day we fought the Enforcers appeared in his hands. Getting a closer look at them, I saw that they were a kind of parody of my own weapons, with both being somewhat larger than the average pistol and one being black with a silver grip and the other silver with a black grip.

"Let's rock!" He exclaimed before opening fire on me. However, this time I was ready and dashed off to the side, my enhanced speed carrying me away from his shots. Troper's aim followed, and he continued to shoot at a steady pace while standing in place.

As I zigzagged between the bullets I mused how this was a first for me. Most magi and supernatural creatures used magic to attack at long range, and those that use weapons prefer archaic weaponry over modern ones. As such, I think this was the first time I was ever shot at. There were a number of things I could have done in response, but for the moment I simply dodged as there were two points that I wanted to make to my counterpart about downsides of modern firearms. The first was that a moving target, especially one that's supernaturally fast, is incredibly hard to hit at a range. The other...

_Click click_. The sound of two slides locking back was my signal to charge forward. One of the main downsides of modern projectile weapons was that they needed ammo. And seeing as how Troper's hands were both occupied with guns, there was no way he could reload even remotely before I reached him. I came at him with a diagonal slash, intending to show him his folly.

Unfortunately for me, it seems that's what he was counting on. With a grin on his face, he incanted "Lightning Bruiser." Suddenly moving faster than I anticipated, he ducked and moved toward me, moving inside my guard. Rather than trying to do something more harmful, he went for the fastest option and simply straightened, pushing up with his legs and shoulder checking me in the chest. It sent me flying back a ways, but I easily recover a short distance from him, silently cursing myself for not realized that he had enhancements of his own. Looking back at him, I saw Troper holding the pistols in front of him in a way that showed me the slides.

"Bottomless Magazines." With a pair of clicks, the slides moved back into position.

Crap.

We both began moving across the clearing at high speeds, with him running and gunning and me in pursuit. In spite of his efforts I was still closing the distance between us, as one of the few things harder than hitting a moving target is if both you and the target are moving. A person wouldn't be able to do it unless they had-

"Improbable Aiming Skills!"

Damn it! Coming to a stop, I quickly yelled "Rho Aias!", and the seven petal shield came into existence in front of me just before Troper's bullets could slam into my chest. I was coming to realize that I would have to up my tactics if I wanted to close the distance between the two of us.

"Come on, I've seen that already! Show me something new!" Troper yelled as he circled around me, tying to get around the immobile shield.

Seeing as how he had been controlling the fight so far, it was with some satisfaction that I noticed the look of surprise on his face when upon getting a clear view of me he saw the broadsword hurling at him.

He barely managed to twist out of the way before the blade could cut into him tumbling a bit before landing in a crouch. "I… did not know you could do that."

I gave a grin of my own as several more swords appeared out of thin air around him and shot forward to turn him into a pincushion.

Somewhat panicked, he yelled out "High Speed Missile Dodge!" In an impressive display of acrobatics, he managed to duck, weave, and dodge all the swords that came at him. However, the time spent dodging was all the time I needed to close the distance between us.

Even while dodging for his life, Troper managed to spot me as I moved towards him. Evading the last blade but not having enough time to escape, he settled into a bent leg stance, with both his hands at the left side of his waist as if he was in an Iaijutsu Practitioner. Wait…

At the last moment, I jumped over him as the katana materialized in his hands and he shouted "Absurdly Sharp Blade!" He let his momentum carry him around, spinning to meet me as I landed. I brought Bayuka up to meet his sword, and noticed how the katana managed to bite into the black saber. Troper smirked. "You didn't think I could only use guns, did you?"

And with that, the two of us danced though the clearing in a battle of blades, and I got the first real chance to analyze his enhancement. I had found it somewhat odd that he choose Lightning Bruiser to enhance himself given his preference for ranged combat, but it made more sense now that it seemed he had a more multi-disciplined approach to combat. In any case, our respective physical abilities were surprisingly close, but there were a few subtle differences that I mange to pick up. Namely, I seemed to be somewhat stronger and tougher than he was, but he was a bit faster and his strikes were even more accurate than my own. Remembering back to when I had seen most of his bare body, it occurred to me that the differences were likely caused by our different styles in general.

Speaking of style, I was somewhat surprised to find his skill with the sword good but… generic. He had a solid stance with a good offense and defense, but there was nothing particularly outstanding about it. It was clear that while he knew how to use a sword, he wasn't anywhere as good as I was. The strain of keeping up with my counter attack style was clearly starting to show, a grimace on his face as he warded off my attacks. To his credit though he had realized the futility of trying to hit me and was instead focusing on my blades, letting his own Absurdly Sharp Blade wear them down. He probably knew that I could make new ones in an instant at this point, but I figured he was hoping to cut straight through them and attack me at the same time before I could summon the next pair. However, I knew just how to deal with this.

We clashed a bit more before Troper finally made his move, bringing down the katana in overhead slash yelling "Wrecked Weapon!"

Rather than trying to block with the damaged blades I instead let them dissipate back into od and thrust myself upward, Tracing a new weapon into my hands.

Ascalon, The Blessed Sword By Which Force Is Slain. The invincible sword wielded by Saint George which delivers it's wielder from those who would do harm.

Trope or not, there was nothing that could break that Noble Phantasm. My superior strength and sudden rush forward combined with the invincible weapon caused Troper's attack to be repulsed violently, knocking the sword from his grip and causing him to stumble backwards. I took the opportunity to follow through and strike him.

Just before I could do so, he pointed two fingers at me from his right hand and a small bolt of lightning shot out, striking me in my center of mass. I haven't been hit with lightning attacks often, but I could tell that it was fairly weak. Nevertheless, the electricity coursing through my body caused me to stumble and miss. This gave him enough time to jump away and put some distance between us.

There was a brief lull in battle as the two of us looked at each other and caught our breaths. As I looked at him, I thought of how something about the last attack seemed off. Namely, that he didn't call out the trope's name before he used it. _Every other attack he's used so far he's called out the name as a sort of aria, but this time he didn't_. I blinked for a moment and thought back to the beginning of the battle. _No, wait, he also brought out that revolver wordlessly, and technically those pistols__ of his if you don't count__ 'Invoke on'_. I had assumed that it was some kind of requirement for him, so why was he sometimes able to avert Calling Your Attacks-

I blinked in surprise as I answered my own question. "You're averting Calling Your Attacks." I blurted out, remembering how he had inverted the Absurdly Sharp Blade trope when he first arrived at the Izumo House. I had forgotten that he could use tropes differently other than playing them straight.

Troper gave a chuckle. "Yeah, I was wondering when you'd catch on. It costs a little more prana to do so, but it's faster and more tacitly sound."

I frowned a bit. "Then why haven't you been doing it this whole fight?"

"First, we're trying learn each other's abilities, so it wouldn't be practical to do so. And second," he gave me a sly look. "who says I haven't?"

I gave him a wary look as I thought about it, and realized that calling some of your attacks while hiding others could be just as effective at deceiving your opponent as not saying anything at all. Rather clever all things considered.

"That's quite the sword your holding." He suddenly mentioned, pointing to Ascalon. "A Noble Phantasm if I'm not mistaken. As were those other two you were wielding earlier if your magic resistance increase was any indication." I was about to ask how he knew about that before I remember his implication that he had been using other tropes during the fight which I had not noticed. He continued "I'm willing to bet that you have more than a few in your arsenal."

"Maybe." I replied noncommittally. "And you're keeping your arsenal close to the vest as well. I can think of a number of tropes that would have been useful in the fight that you haven't used."

He gave a shrug. "Aside from the prana requirements that would make them impractical or even impossible to use, there's a lot of tropes I just don't have enough practice with. Take that Shock and Awe for example. I have all the Elemental Powers, but that doesn't mean I can use them particularly well. And that's not even going into how difficult it is for me to use environmental tropes." He glanced back at the assembled Sekirei and observed the expectant looks on their faces. "Tell you what, why don't we finish this off with a big show?"

I frowned in confusion for a moment before my eyebrows shot up. "You can't mean your Reality Marble?"

"What? No, that wouldn't be remotely fair unless you could use yours too." He paused for a moment and cupped his chin in thought. "Actually, I don't know if we could deploy them at the same time. I don't think it's ever been tried before." He shook his head. "In any case, that would give Homura a heart attack. I was just thinking we'd use some of our more flashy abilities."

I raised an eyebrow at this. "Is that really necessary?"

"Necessary? Who cares! Rule of Cool, damn it!" He stated enthusiastically. "Alright, Lightning Bruiser, Made of Iron, Supernatural Martial Arts, Battle Aura!" He told a deep breath. "Up to Eleven!"

Suddenly his whole body lit up like a flood light, and I could _feel_ his presence emanating from him. The light around him then died down a bit, instead becoming a yellowish haze that rapidly ascended upwards. The other most notable change was that his hair, while originally quite spiky like my own, was now sticking straight up and bleached blonde in color.

My knowledge of anime and manga might be vastly inferior compared to my sister, but even I could recognize the resemblance to one of the most popular characters in Japan.

"What."

"Less talking, more fighting!" With that Troper punched the ground and a wave of earth suddenly rose up and surged towards me. I just managed to jump over it when I saw my counterpart bringing back his fist. Taking no chances, I brought Ascalon in front of me and, sure enough, he fired some kind of Ki Attack which the sword managed to absorb. As I landed, I let the blade dissipate as I cast out my hands, yelling "Enkidu!" The length of chain appeared and shot out from my hand, wrapping around Troper as it did so. I was hoping that it would hold him long enough till I thought of something, but he almost immediately used Breaking the Bonds to free himself. Whatever his appearances might be, he was still just a man, so the chains were only as strong as normal iron and shattered easily.

I cursed to myself as I ran around him, firing more swords at him as I went. Unfortunately for me, he simply shot them out of the air with more Ki Attacks. I even tried firing a few Noble Phantasms at him (nothing too prana intensive, but he did say make it flashy), but he just managed to deflect, parry or dodge them with no apparent harm to himself.

I was running out of ideas when he suddenly dropped his stance and brought his hands down beside his waist as if he was cupping something. The position looked vaguely familiar for some reas-

Oh no.

"Kamehame-"

Oh you have got to be kidding me!

"-Hadoken!" Troper thrust out his hands and a beam of blue light, not nearly as big as some of the more prominent examples from the show it was based on of but intimidating nonetheless, shot towards me across the clearing.

I was about to dodge it when I realized I was making this a lot harder than I had to be.

Just before the beam hit me, it simply disappeared, as if into a void. Troper looked on in surprise as a small dagger with a round hilt floated above my shoulder. "Fargarach." I said, and I fired a yellow beam back in kind.

Troper's look of surprise lasted only for a moment before a grin split his face. "Alright! Beam-o-War!" With that, he fired a second beam which intercepted my own at (of course) the point equidistant between both of us.

The two blasts pushed against each other for a few moments before a large explosion erupted at the center point, throwing dirt and smoke up everywhere. For a few moments, I couldn't see anything but I remained alert in case of a sneak attack. When the smoke finally cleared, I saw Troper standing in the exact stance he had fired the beam from, but now not visibly powered up.

A moment later he gave a groan and collapsed on to his back. "I really shouldn't do that. It takes way to much energy."

I grumbled back at him, still standing in a fighting stance. "So are we done?"

"Not quite." He replied, still looking up at the sky. "You want to know what trope I used to make the revolver at the beginning of the fight?"

"Fine. What?"

"Chekhov's Gun." _Blam_!

I griped my shoulder in pain and looked at where the bullet clipped it. Looking back at Troper, I saw him pointing the gun he had thrown away at the beginning of the fight at me, a grin on his face as he did so. "By the way, I total could have made that a kill shot."

"With the way you hands are shaking right now, I'm surprised you didn't accidently." I remarked with some alarm. "Also, you can't seriously tell me you just happened to fall on that just now."

If he were standing, I'm sure Troper would have shrugged. "It's Chekov's Gun. Of course I did." He made a move to sit up, but was summarily defeated by gravity. "Umm, a little help here?"

I gave a weary sigh as walked over to his prone body. Or at least I tried to before I was tackled by a hyperactive battle maniac. "Shirou-san! That was amazing! That was even better than the fight between you and Miya-sama! And Troper-san was so amazing too! He shot laser beams, and was strong and fast and-"

"Musubi!" I exclaimed I exclaimed while squirming in her embrace vigorously to keep her from dragging my head into her love pillows. "Why don't you try congratulating Troper then?"

"Ah! Good idea!" With that she got off me and proceeded to jump on Troper's prone form, electing a cry of "Troper-san!" from her and a yell of panic from him, and soon he found his head buried in the valley is so narrowly avoided. As I looked at the scene, I felt I should probably feel some anger or jealousy at the sight of one of my 'wives' giving someone else such a detailed tour of her chest, but seeing at how Troper's legs were starting to fail with the lack of oxygen, I was just glad it wasn't me.

A shadow cast over me, and looking up a saw the oddly familiar sight of a pair of racy panties from underneath a kimono. I blushed and averted my gaze. "Could you help me up, Akitsu?"

No sooner than the ice Sekrei did, I found Kuu-chan wrapped around my leg. "Onii-chan has magic swords!" she exclaimed. "And he doesn't even need his hand to use them!"

"He shouldn't have to use them!" Exclaimed Tsukiumi as she strode towards me. "Shirou, while your skills are very im-impressive, I don't want you doing anything that dangerous again!"

I gave a sigh. "Worried about my wellbeing?"

The water Sekirei blushed and looked of the side. "O-of course I'm worried. You shouldn't have to fight."

"Ah, but he's so manly when he does so." Kazehana chimed in.

I was about to respond when I noticed one of my flock members was missing. "Hey, where's Homura?"

"Oh, right where we left him." The wind Sekirei said, pointing back to the edge of the clearing where Homura still stood, his mouth gaping open and his body slumped.

Sometimes I really worry that I'm going to give that man an aneurism one of these days.

In any case, Troper at some point managed to convince Musubi not to asphyxiate him, and the latter was supporting the former by the waist as the two walked to the rest of the group. "That part where you started to glow was my favorite Troper-san!" Musubi said. "You should do that all the time!"

"Sorry to disappoint you, but that little Super Mode of mine falls into the Awesome but Impractical category." He replied. "Aside from consuming far too much prana too fast and leaving me useless afterwards, all of those attacks you saw me do are incredibly inefficient. Shirou himself proved that they can be dodged or countered. Really, I just did it because it looks flashy and I wanted to put on a show."

As the lot of us started to walk back to the edge of the clearing, Troper turned his head to address me. "So, I'll admit, I didn't think too much of your ability when I figured out your Origin, but now I am officially impressed. Are you really creating Nobel Phantasms from scratch?"

"No, I can remember any sword I see and make an almost perfect copy of it instantly."

"Any that includes some pretty powerful swords." He remarked. "Not to mention you figured out how to launch them at people like a certain someone we both knew…"

I gave him a wiry glance. "How did you think I beat him?"

Troper suddenly stiffened in shock, and then a look of giddiness crossed his face. "Shirou, are you telling me you countered the Gate of Babylon by cranking Shoot the Bullet Up to Eleven with an identical Storm of Blades?" I gave a nod and my counterpart burst in to laugher, his eyes watering from tears as he did so. "Oh, that is just beautifully poetic! Gilgamesh must have been _pissed_!"

It was at this point we had gotten close enough to Homura that he could hear us, and Troper's comment had snapped him out of his stupor. "Wait, Gilgamesh? As in the first hero and king of mankind? The man who was two thirds divinity? You fought _that_ Gilgamesh?" I sheepishly rubbed the back of my head, giving him his answer. "Graaah! There has to be a limit! You can't possible have anything more absurd about you!"

Troper gave a snort. "Please. I only have a vague idea about his past and I can tell you there are at least two or three more ridiculous things about him."

"Like what?" Homura exclaimed.

"Like who he learned his fighting style from."

Homura paused in confusion for a moment. "I thought he created his own style."

"Yep!" Troper replied with a grin, as if he knew some kind of inside joke (which he did).

"Who taught you your style, Troper-san?" Musubi asked with curiosity.

"Oh, I stole it. From myself. From the future."

Homura just stared at him dumbfounded for a few moments before giving a sigh and Face Palming. "Well, at least I know that your answer can't be as crazy as that, right Shirou?" When he didn't hear me respond, he turned towards me to find me once again looking off to the side and rubbing the back of my head sheepishly.

"No," he said in horror. "No, that's not true. That's impossible!"

Troper spoke up, his voice noticeably deeper as he did so. "Search your feelings; you know it to be true."

"Noooooooooo!"


	20. Chapter 15: Interruptions

"So, what was your Archer like?" I asked as we walked back to the inn. Neither I nor my counterpart had talked to each other much since the end of our spar, so my sudden question to him made him start in surprise. Admittedly it was something of an odd question, but from what I'd inferred, his Archer had all of Troper's abilities and was an alternate future version of him just like mine was. Given how my Archer had been broken and betrayed by the ideals which I once (and for the most part still somewhat) had, I had a sort of morbid curiosity of what a person like Troper would become when subjected to the same kind of trials.

After the moment of surprise had passed, Troper looked down at the ground in thought before eventually replying "Terrifying."

I gave a small chuckle. "Yeah, I think I know what you mean." I said, thinking back to my duel with the Counter Guardian and how he managed to outclass me at everything I did.

"No, I don't think you do." He said, shaking his head. "I'm not sure if your Archer mentioned this, but every counter guardian has limited access to the Akashic Records. They have to in order to do their job, what with all the Timey Wimey Ball nonsense. It's anyone's guess how much that version of myself managed to learn, but…"

"But…?"

Troper gave a frown before continuing. "It's a little difficult to explain just how my abilities work, but the short of it is that in a similar manner to how you get stronger by seeing more swords and weapons, I get stronger by seeing and being a part of stories."

My eyebrows rose at this. "… and he managed to get access to every story in existence." I remarked. "That is impressive, but I still don't see why you think I don't understand. I'm pretty sure that my Archer had just about every weapon every made plus the years of skill to use them."

Again, Troper shook his head. "It's more to it than that. It's not just that I get more tropes to use. The more I see a particular trope, and the more I use it, the more efficient and powerful it becomes. I didn't fully realize the scope of what he had been through until we fought." He gave a grimace. "It was then I realized that even without the power of the World behind him that the man was capable of almost anything. I have no doubt that if he really wanted to, he could have taken out all of the other Servants – including Gilgamesh – with ease."

"He must have been really strong, Troper-san!" Musubi sudden said from behind us, startling both me and my counterpart.

"Do you even know what we're talking about?" I asked.

"Not really!" She admitted with far too much exuberance for such a statement. "I just know that you're talking about really strong people!"

Troper small laugh as he looked back at the bear Sekirei. "Well, yes, you could definitely say that he was a strong person."

"But if he was that powerful, why didn't he just kill all the other Servants?" I said with a raised eyebrow.

"Because it would have made for a terrible story." I gave him an incredulous look before he elaborated. "Have you ever heard of someone Awakening their Origin?"

I gave it some thought for a moment before I said "No. What is that?"

"The short of it is that a person can become so in tune with their Origin aspect that it becomes impossible for them to deviate from it. They also become more powerful when acting in alignment to their Origin aspect. I don't know if it happened to Archer as soon as he saw the Akashic Records or at some point later, but he became Awakened to Tropes. He could play with tropes all he wanted, but he was literally incapable of acting in a way that would result in a bad story. He could have taken out everyone in the war in a day, but no one would want to read about it."

I gave a low whistle. "That must have been frustrating for him."

Troper gave a grimace. "Not… really. There's something you have to understand. There have been people with Awakened Origins. There have been incarnations. There have been people with Reality Marbles. However, I don't think there has been anyone beside him who managed all three at once. I don't know if it could happen with a different combination of things, but that man really couldn't be considered human anymore, in both mind and body. He was more of an… anthromorphic personification, if anything."

I was silent for a few moments as I took this information in. I couldn't help but wonder _What would happen to me if I Awakened my Origin__?_ I decided that I'd rather not think about it, and eventually said "So, I'm guessing that he didn't care about being a Counter Guardian? Because mine hated it. He actually tried to kill me in the small chance that it would cause a paradox and wipe him from existence."

"Really?" Troper asked with some interest. "As a matter of fact, mine tried to kill me too."

"Yeah, but that was because the story demanded it, right?"

"No. I think it was actually the only think he did that wasn't because the story demanded it. Oddly enough, it was probably the most human thing he tried to do. Though it wasn't to paradox himself out of existence."

"Then, why?"

"He hated me because I reminded him of all the humanity he had lost." Troper turned and gave me glance. "Spiritual osmosis goes both ways you know."

"So, what happened to him?"

Troper looked at the ground in front of him, a sad look on his face. "I… don't know. I suspect that the small bit of humanity left in him still looking for that Everdistant Utopia." His face contorted a little as a hint of bitterness entered his voice. "I guess it's ironic now that I…"

"That you what?" I asked with some confusion after he trailed off.

Troper shook his head. "Never mind."

Frowning at his sudden melancholy, I decided to bring up something that had been bugging me. "So, if you ended up absorbing his skill and tropes, why aren't you 'capable of almost anything'? You said it yourself that there are a number of tropes that you simply can't use very well."

Turning back to me he said "That's because while I did inherit his entire library of tropes, it seems that I only got the skills he had with the tropes he used during the war." He gave a sigh. "I have to restate that I only have speculation on how all this worked, and I'm still rather confused about number of things. It's also important to note that a lot of my abilities are affected by how things relate to each other conceptually. As such, the simplest explanation I can come up for this is that the tropes I absorbed proficiency for were the ones that he used for the war because they were the ones that I also happened to use for the war, and I think were the ones that he used in the war before he became a Counter Guardian."

I blinked several times while trying to understand what my counterpart just said. "My head hurts." I concluded.

"Try living it." Troper retorted.

"If that's the sort of thing you routinely have to deal with in your life, it's a small wonder that the magus that tried to read your mind went crazy."

My doppelganger donned a contemplative look. "Didn't you say that someone tried a similar thing on you? What happened to them?"

I shifted uncomfortably as I remembered one of the more gruesome events of the previous day. "He suffered from sword gashes and wounds spontaneously appearing all over his body. There was probably a great deal of internal damage as well."

Troper gave a grimace. "Ouch. I wasn't aware that your mind was so… sharp."

I gave him deadpan look in response to the pun before I lowered my voice a bit. "Thanks, but I think the fact that I had my Reality Marble internally deployed at the time might have had something to do with it."

"What?!" He suddenly yelled, causing me to jump back somewhat in surprise. "How in God's name did things get to the point where you had to do something so insanely dangerous?!"

My entire flock (as well as myself) stared at Troper in surprise at his sudden outburst. I was particularly confused about why he thought that internally deploying my Reality Marble was 'insanely dangerous'. Sure it was tricky, and there were a number of this that could potentially go wrong if I screwed up, but it wasn't nearly as dangerous as Troper seemed to think it was. I blinked a few time before responding. "I… needed a way to defend myself against the Etherlite, and that was the best thing I could think of. I only did it for a few seconds."

Now it was Troper's turn to look confused. "Only for… wait, what exactly happens when you internally deploy it?"

Not quite sure what he was getting at, I slowly said "My body becomes made out of swords."

"…And?"

"And that's it." I finished with a frown on my face. "It's useful as a defensive measure and for suddenly making blades pop out of my body. I don't see how that's any more dangerous that what I do normally."

"Oh." My counterpart replied, all the tension leaving his body. "Well, in that case, just ignore what I said."

We had just reached the fence of the inn when I said "Wait, what did you think it would do? Have you ever internally-"

That was as far as I got before I heard someone call out my name. Turning towards the street, I was surprised to see Haruka and Kuno running towards me of all people. I didn't know why they were here though; Haruka made it quite clear how much he didn't like me and the last I heard of them was that they fled when Yukari was kidnapped. I then remember how it would be bad if anyone happened to see me and Troper at the same time, so I turned to him to tell him to him to hide. However, by the time I turned around he had already donned the bandana/Stetson combo which he was wearing during yesterday's events. _How did he put those on so fast? And for that matter, where was he keeping them?_

Before I could ask, Haruka had closed the distance between the two of us and was now panting heavily in front of me. "Shirou-san!" He panted between gasping for air. "Someone has kidnapped you sister!"

I stared at him blankly for a moment before Face Palming. Either my sister had been kidnapped twice in as many days, or he was just really late in telling me this. Giving how much Takami would be watching Yukari after we recovered her, I was inclined to believe the later. "And why are you telling me this now? This happened yesterday."

The young man flinched a bit before continuing. "I-I ran away and hid. I was too afraid to do anything." He looked into my eyes resolutely. "But I can't do that anymore! Yukari's really weird and perverted, but she doesn't deserve to be kidnapped! And you, you may be a blood thirsty maniac, but you still deserve to know! And-" he suddenly cut himself off and blinked in confusion. "Wait, how did you know that it happened yesterday?"

I stared at him dumbfounded at his sudden (and somewhat insulting) declaration. Up until this point I had believed that he was pretty much only concerned with himself and his Sekirei, but now he was trying to be helpful to me for the sake of my sister. It was somewhat hard to believe, but maybe my sister was actually a good influence on him? "While I do appreciate you coming to tell me, you're a bit too late. Shiina told me about it yesterday and we already rescued her."

"Oh." Haruka replied, somewhat deflated that his new resolve was unneeded. "Well, uh, in that case, I guess I'll be going."

I gave a sigh as I held out my hand to stop him. "Wait. Look, I really do appreciate that you have enough concern for my sister that you would come to me about it. Why don't you come back for dinner later?"

Kuno's face brightened at this. "His food is really good…" she said, looking at her Ashikabi with pleading eyes

Haruka hesitated for a moment before capitulating. "Well, alright." He gave a last glance at the rest of my flock and Troper before saying "I'll see you later, I guess." and walking away.

"That was… odd." Troper remarked. "Who was he?"

"I'll tell you about it later." I said and walked into the Izumo House. "We're back!" I announced before setting off to see Miya to tell her I would probably be spending a good amount of time in the bath.

I found her, and surprisingly enough Rin and Saber, drinking tea together in the dining room. The three of them turned to our assembled group as we walked in. "Ah, Emiya-kun, it seems that you and Troper-kun had a most eventful sparing match." Miya said, looking at the torn and dirty state of our cloths. "I'm a little surprised considering how tired the two of you looked when you left."

"It's a shame it wasn't more 'eventful'…" Rin grumbled into her tea. Oddly enough, I found this thinly veiled hope for my physical harm somewhat encouraging, as that was her usual response whenever I did something incredibly stupid. It was a sign the she was returning to her normal state of mind.

Such was what one lived with when they were in love with a tsundere.

"It was… interesting to say the least." I replied. "In any case we were able to fight at full strength due to a spell that Troper cast on us which removed our exhaustion." I frowned in thought and turned to my counterpart. "Didn't you say that would catch up to us and cause us to collapse after the battle? Why hasn't that happened yet?"

Troper waved his hand around vaguely. "Oh, that's because it won't kick in until the most inopportune or comically appropriate ti-" That was as far as he got before he pitched forward and landed face first on the ground with a thud.

I sighed as I looked at his prone form. I probably should have guessed such a thing would happen with a man driven by Narrative Causality.

"Ara ara, such an interesting young man!" Miya exclaimed with her eyes crinkled shut. "Could one of you bring him to his room?"

"I will, landlady!" Musubi exclaimed, and then proceed to dump Troper's body unceremoniously over her shoulder in a fireman carry and dashed away.

I gave the three women sipping tea speculative glance. "So, you seem to be getting along."

Saber nodded. "Miya-dono has been a most gracious host."

"Even though she seems to have some rather absurd ideas about where magic comes from." Rin huffed.

I gave Miya an exasperated glance. The landlady was still stubbornly sticking to the belief that magi all had a secret Sekirei lineage in spite of everything I had shown her. Hell, Troper was from another dimension for god's sake and that still didn't convince her.

Miya simply gave a sigh. "I suppose I must admit that it is possible that magic is in fact separate from Sekirei power. Your lovers have been showing me a great many things that I'm having trouble explaining otherwise." The No. 1 Sekirei tone somehow turned petulant. "Like how Saber–kun managed to beat me in our own spar."

"What?!" I said with some alarm. "The two of you fought?! But the neighborhood is still in one piece!" I could only speculate how powerful Miya was compared to Saber, but I knew that she was at least strong enough to give the blonde swordwoman a decent challenge.

Saber turned to me. "Don't worry, Shirou. We fought in the plot adjacent to the inn and limited ourselves so we would not draw too much attention." She turned back to Miya. "And you should not feel ashamed of your loss. You fought with honor and skill. Do not take this as an insult, but the reason I was victorious was because I have much more experience in combat that you." She tilted her head to the side and smiled. "Skilled though you are, you are still a fairly young woman."

Amused as I was by the landlady's blushing at Saber's comment, I still thought about how the fact that the Heroic Spirit had more experience was an understatement. Even ignoring all of the battles she had against fellow Servants, Saber still had a lifetime of warfare under her belt. In spite of her looks, the former king of Brittan was (subjectively) in her forties, so it's a small wonder that she had more skill.

"That pervert woman with the glasses made a recording if you want to watch it later." Rin remarked to me. She then gave a small sigh and put down her cup. Getting to her feet, faced me with her arms crossed imperiously over her chest and a dark look on her face. "Shirou, we-"

That's as far as she got before she was interrupted by the sound of the front door slamming open and a familiar cry of "Onii-chan!" came rushing towards me from behind. Wasting no time, I Reinforced myself just a little bit to compensate for my exhaustion and turned just in time have my little sister crash into me.

"Onii-chan! Mom told me how you came to save me and you beat all those mean guys up so I wanted to come and thank you but she wouldn't let me out of the building but I managed to sneak away anyway and-" she suddenly stopped to take a breath, but rather than continuing she noticed Rin and Saber standing behind me. "Oh, Sakura-san! I should thank you too for setting me free in the first place!"

Rin, looking very annoyed that she had been interrupted, said "Why do you keep calling me Sakura? My name is Rin, damn it!"

Oh crap.

Yukari's eyes widened. "Wait, you mean you're one of Onii-chan's former lovers?" She turned to the Heroic Spirit. "And does that mean you're Saber?"

"Yes!" Rin said in frustration.

Yukari's face twisted into a frown. "So you're the ones who broke my gentle Onii-chan's heart!"

Rin's eyebrow twitched. "We broke _his_ heart?" she said, her hand moving toward the pouch where I knew she kept her prana infused jewels.

Saber returned a frown of her own. "I do not approve of what you are implying." She said as she rose to her feet with a ridged stance.

My sister drew herself up imperiously as well. "Imply nothing! I'm saying that-"

"Yukari!" I said in a panic. I had to get things under control and fast. "Please don't fight! I can explain every-"

And that was as far as I got everything suddenly went black and I felt myself pitching forward. Stupid Troper. I'm blaming him if the house burns down.


	21. Aside: Rin, Saber, and Troper

Rin paced back and forth in her room, muttering angrily to herself. That insufferable girl who had burst into the inn and latched onto Shirou had been shepherded off to another room by the landlady, after the purple haired woman interfered before her and Saber could make the younger girl pay for her insolence. Rin wasn't entirely sure how Miya did it, but she had enough sense to know that she shouldn't mess with an alien creature that could make such a horrifying aura of malice at will. Sure, Saber could take her (and she pretty much had earlier that day), but unfortunately Saber respected the landlady's domain over her inn, and had dragged Rin back to their room to cool down at her request. Consider that in the half hour since she had been confined to the room she had gone down from loudly ranting to just muttering, it was something of a work in progress.

"Are you feeling less confrontational, Rin?" Saber asked from her position on the futon where she had been keeping a watchful eye on the wrathful magus.

"Of course not!" Rin replied. "Some weird girl shows up out of nowhere and starts calling us horrible people because she doesn't have a Root be damned idea what she's talking about? Of course I still feel like putting that idiotic whelp in her place! And who was she anyway?"

"I believe it was mentioned that she is Shirou's biological sister at some point."

Rin gave a grunt as she looked at her Servant. "You seem entirely too calm about this. Do you really think that just because she's related to Shirou we should just let her say whatever she wants about us?"

"Considering her behavior around Shirou, it's safe to say that she cares for him and likely decided to lash out at a perceived slight on his behalf, if incorrectly. As such, a little lenience is in order." Saber said. Her eyes then narrowed. "However, I do not think we should be entirely forgiving on this matter. When the appropriate time comes I will… correct the young girl's misconceptions and teach her not to jump to conclusion so quickly."

Rin felt a small amount of satisfaction at that. Saber was always one to favor politeness and decorum in most social situation, and it sometime made Rin forget that it didn't mean the former king was willing to let insults slide. "Well, if that's the case, I suppose I can hold off on disciplining the girl for a while longer. So, let's go. I still want to ask Miya a few things about the Sekirei."

"Wait." Saber said, stopping Rin as she was about to leave. "First I would like to know what you were planning on saying to Shirou."

Rin stiffened slightly and looked off to the side. "I… didn't have anything planned really. I was just going to start punching him and see how thing things went from there" She said. In truth, the two of them hadn't talked about the red head since he had told them what he had done last night. They had spent the rest of the night crying in each other's arms, and didn't speak at all the next day until Miya had roused them out of their depression with a challenge for the blonde swordswoman. It still hurt Rin to even think about the whole situation.

Saber gave a small chuckle at Rin's remark before her face fell again. "Rin," she said in a small, weak voice that seemed unnatural for the normally charismatic woman, "What are we going to do?"

Rin stared helplessly at Saber, wishing she had the answer to that question. Relationships weren't exactly something she was familiar with, outside the one she had with Shirou and Saber. Hell, before the Grail War, she never even really had friends, let alone lovers. For all of her genius, she had no idea what to do the pain, the utter sense of betrayal she felt. For what little she had thought about it, Rin supposed could understand why Shirou did what he did, but she still felt it was a terrible reason. She moved to the other woman, sitting down next to her and wrapping her arm around her. "I don't know. I just… don't know. I don't suppose your code as a knight has anything to say on the matter, does it?"

Saber's look fell even more. "The last time I followed my code when it came to relationships, I tried to have Guinevere burned at the stake." She said bitterly. "That mistake cost me my life and my kingdom."

"Uh…" Rin said uncomfortably, having forgotten how Saber's last marriage ended. "So, I guess we can rule out lighting him on fire then."

"There are a number of reasons I would not like to try that again, yes."

Rin was silent for a few moments, until she finally managed to voice that thought that had been eating at her since last night. "Saber…" She began slowly, "I don't know if I can forgive him."

Saber didn't respond, instead looking at the ground and clenching her fists. Rin knew the woman well enough that while Saber didn't want to admit it, the thought had crossed her mind too.

Before either of them could say anything else, there was a knock on the doorframe. "Excuse me, I'd like to talk to you if that's alright." It was Shirou's voice.

The two women looked at each other hesitantly before Saber said "Shirou… I'm not sure if now is the best time."

There was a pause before the voice on the other side of the door continued. "Oh, well in that case, would you like to talk to my incredibly handsome extra-dimensional counterpart? I heard that guy is pretty awesome."

Rin and Saber blinked in confusion for a few moments at Shirou's rather strange statement before Rin narrowed her eyes. "Wait, you're not Shirou are you?"

The door slid open to reveal the man who looked identical Shirou save a few white strands peppered throughout his hair, an eyebrow raised at Rin's question. "Of course I'm Shirou, just not the one you know." He looked at the two women huddled close on the futon with a wary look. "I'm sorry, if this is a bad time…"

"No, no, it's fine." Rin quickly said as she got to her feet. She really didn't want to continue the line of thought that she and Saber were discussing, and was glad to have any kind of distraction from it. "What do want, Shir-" She cut herself off before she confused him with Shirou again, but then awkwardly realized that it was also the name of the man standing in front of her, so there was no need to do so.

Seeing Rin's plight, the man gave a smile and said "Just call me Troper, it keeps things from getting confusing. As for why I'm here, I was made to understand that you wanted to talk to me, so I figured now would be a good time while we wait for Shirou to wake up."

"Wait, why is it that you have recovered so much faster than Shirou?" Saber asked with a frown.

"I've used that trope plenty of times. I'm much more used to its effects than he is, so I can shake it off faster." He said.

"Trope? You mean spell, right?" Rin asked. "For that matter, why do you call yourself Troper?"

Troper hesitated for a moment. "Getting into all the details about it would make for a very long explanation, but the short version is this: Rather than having the Origin and Element of Sword like your Shirou, I have the Origin and Element of Trope. It is the basis of all of my magecaft, so for me spells and tropes are the same thing. The name Troper is something of an inside joke based on a website I created back in my dimension. It actually exists in this one too, but I won't show it to you now as we don't have half a day to kill."

Rin didn't really understand what he was talking about, and it wasn't just because she didn't know what a website was. "I don't understand. A trope is basically just a phrase that means something else. How can it be your Origin?"

Troper lifted up his right hand, which the two women now saw held a thin, rectangular piece of plastic. "I thought you might be confused, so I brought this. Matsu recorded the fight between me and Shirou as well, so watching it should give you a better understanding of what I can do."

Rin looked at the object in his hand dubiously. "What kind of remote control is that? For one thing it's too large, for another it doesn't have any buttons, and we don't have a TV in here. How is that supposed to let us watch anything?"

Troper blinked a few times in surprise before pinching the bridge of his nose, muttering something along the line of "Well, at least your better than most magi…" before tapping one side of the device several times and handing it to Rin. "Here. Just touch the screen to start the video."

To the small magus's surprise, the side that was once black was now a picture of a clearing, with both Shirou and his double standing in the middle of it. When she hesitantly poked at the image, she almost dropped it in surprise when it began to move and sound started to emit for the device. "What? They've made a TV you can hold in your hand?" She said incredulously, turning it over in her hands to examine how thin it was.

"Actually, that's a computer, but that's not important right now." Troper remarked, gesturing for her to return her gaze to the video.

Rin obliged, with Saber looking over her shoulder. They turned their attention to it just in time to see Shirou Trace his traditional swords and flourish them slightly. Troper's response was to pull out a gun and shoot him!

"Hey!" Both Rin and Saber said angrily to the man standing next to them.

Troper rolled his eyes at this. "Has no one in this dimension seen _Raiders of the Lost Ark_? Besides, I've never really understood why other magi find using guns to be beneath them."

They glared at him for a moment longer before their eyes returned to the screen, the battle between the two Shirous underway. True enough, Troper favored the use of ballistic weaponry, shooting and dancing away from Shirou. The odd thing was that he would occasionally say some cryptic phrases and then something strange would happen to accompany it. Rin figured that it must be how he casts spells, although she was having a hard time pinning down the exact effects, or making sense of his arias for that matter. Considering his speed and the fact that he seemed to be creating objects, his powers were at least somewhat like Shirou's, though Rin felt a nagging sensation that he was missing something important.

Her confusion grew when later in the video, after saying a slightly longer if disjointed aria, the Troper in the video suddenly started to glow and shoot small blasts of light at Shirou. The duel ended when Shirou somehow reflected one of the larger blasts, which in turn was intercepted by an identical attack, causing a rather impressive explosion.

The two women blinked a few times before Rin turned to Troper and said "How does that-"

"Wait." He interrupted. "It's not quiet done."

The two turned back to the screen just in time to see Troper shoot Shirou again. "Hey!"

Troper gave a chuckle. "No one ever expects the chekhov's gun. Now, what were you saying?"

In a somewhat exasperated tone, Rin said "How does that explain anything about your magic? What exactly is it that you can do?"

A small frown crossed his face as he thought for a moment. "Do you remember what I said early in the fight, just before the slides of my gun clicked back into place?"

"Bottomless magazines?" Saber asked "I don't understand. What did that mean?"

"Have you ever watched a movie where the hero can fire his gun endlessly and never seems to run out of bullets even though he should?" The two women nodded at this, having become more familiar with the form of entertainment ever since they met Shirou. "It's basically that."

It suddenly came together in Rin's head. "Bottomless magazines is a trope for the concept of never running out of ammo. You used it as a spell to keep your guns loaded…" she thought back to everything else he had said during the fight, realizing that she could make some sense of what happen if see looked at it through that particular lens of thought.

"In truth, Trope is simply how I define my Origin." Troper said. "My abilities are based on elements in and of fiction, and tropes are an easy way of paraphrasing things. It would be more accurate to say that my Origin is 'concepts that have been used in fiction'. Of course, since basically everything that humanity has ever thought of has been put in fiction at some point, we could probably drop most of that description and simple say 'concepts'."

Rin frowned at this. "That's… incredibly broad an vague actually. It still doesn't tell me what you can do, because it implies that you can do anything you can think of!"

Troper rubbed the back of his head in a motion that the two women found very familiar. "In practice, my abilities are limited by a number of things: how much power I have, how much experience I have with a particular trope, the limits of what I can learn in a human lifetime, the aspects of my own personality, not to mention a few things I'm just learning about how my Reality Marble fundamentally works. But theoretically, yes. I have the potential to do pretty much anything."

Rin's mind boggled at possibilities of this, at just what it would mean to be able to turn any thought you had into reality. However, Saber was wondering something else. "So, what are you trying to do?" the Servant asked.

Troper gave a start, clearing not expecting the question. His wide eyes looked at Saber for a moment before he closed them and gave a sigh. "It's a… personal matter. To put it simply, Rin and I apprenticed ourselves to Zelretch so that we could find something we had lost."

Rin's remembered the conversation they had with Shirou last night at the dinner table, something he had said suddenly bringing itself to the forefront of her mind. "You mean your Saber?" She blurted out without thinking.

His head snapped to her, his eyes narrowing this time. "Now, why would you say that?" he said in a tone that indicated that she should be careful of what she said next.

Taken aback by the sudden and somewhat threatening demeanor of the man, Rin stuttered "I-I'm sorry! I don't know why I said that! Shirou had just told us that you lost your Saber, and I just connected what the two of you said, even though that's probably not the case…" She trailed off, not sure what else to say on the topic that she didn't have the knowledge (or right) to talk about.

After a few more moments of silence, the tension left Troper's body and he gave another sigh. "Actually, it is the case." He said quietly as he looked off to the side.

The two women looked at him in surprise, but he said nothing else. After a minute of silence, Saber finally asked "What happened?"

Troper's gaze turned to her, his expression unreadable as he looked at the face of the woman he was trying to find. "It long story. And not one I one I particularly care to tell."

"Is what happened to her really that complicated?" Rin asked.

"No, what happen was quite simple. It's what I doing about it that's complicated." Troper shifted uncomfortably. "Look, it's rather painful for me to remember, so I don't want to talk about it."

The three of them stood there awkwardly for a few moments, unsure of how to proceed from there. "Perhaps we should continue this talk later?" Rin offered hesitantly. She still had a multitude of questions of the man, but given how things were at the moment, she would probably have a better chance of getting them answered when he wasn't so melancholy.

Troper gave a nod. "That's… probably for the best." He said. "I'll see you at dinner. I can answer any other questions you have for me then." He walked towards the door, but Saber's voice stopped him as he reached the doorway.

"You will find her." She said. His body turned ever so slightly back towards her, and she continued. "If you believe and keep searching, I know you will find her. And if she's anything like me, she will wait for you."

There was a long moment of silence. Rin thought he was going to leave, but before she could say anything, she heard Troper say "They made her choose." His voice was barely above a whisper. "They made her give up the life she deserved so she could save us." He turned fully to the Saber, a sad smile on his face. "I hope that you never have let go of the ones you love like she did."

With that, the man left.


	22. Troper's Tale

(A/N –This takes place during chapter 13, When Shirou is debriefing Rin and Saber. Chronological order? What's that?)

I gave a sigh as I checked the jewel again, and sure enough it continued to gently pull in the direction of the office building across the street from me, only a spare few lights on considering the time of night. I had been circling around the general area for about half an hour following the tracking spell, and had spent three hours before that just trying to get the general area. The spell one the one that Rin had taught me when we were first turning the jewel she had given me into a homing beacon, and she subsequently created another jewel to be its twin to link to. She carried that jewel on her person in case I needed to find her for a change. The spell was one of the very few I knew that belonged to traditional magecraft, which of course meant that I was terrible at it. Power over Tropes can be incredibly versatile, but it can often be too general for a specific purpose. Such as it was, I was glad that the search for Rin hadn't taken all night.

Which wasn't to say that I was in any rush to get back to the Izumo House. Alter!Shirou needed some time to debrief and reconnect with his Rin and Saber, and considering how things were probably going to go, it was not something I should or would be around for.

Returning my attention to the task at hand, I focused a small amount of od into my eyes and gazed at the front of the building, words and descriptions popping into my vision as I did so.

*Deflector Shields: Several Bounded Fields are in place around the building.

-Permeable, though it can be empowered to prevent physical objects and magic from crossing the threshold.

-Perception Filter: Prevents those without magic from paying the building any in depth attention.

-' '

-' '

I clicked my tongue in irritation at the last two points which seemed empty, a consequence of my ability recognizing that there was more but was unable to discern any other details. I could almost hear Rin give an exasperated sigh at my reaction, chastising me for being unsatisfied with my 'quasi-Mystic Eye nonsense' as she liked to call it. She would have been quick to point out that magi would kill for my ability to analyze magic (or just about anything else) with a simple glance from a distance, and given that it was my Reality Marble that gave me this ability, the person they would be killing would most likely be me.

Of course, I would have been just as quick to point out that it frequently doesn't work completely, just like my current situation. Not to mention the fact that the effect is entirely a visual one, and acts on everything I can currently see. Mentally filtering out the Tropes and descriptions that don't belong to the thing I care about is the hard part, which is nothing compared to actually trying to see things when I'm using it. Hell, I can't turn it on in a book store without going blind from what feels like millions of words jamming themselves into my eyeballs.

I cut of the flow of od to my eyes as I thought about the best way to handle the situation. It was a safe bet that this was a safe house for the magi in the city to retreat to if something went wrong (which it did today, somewhat spectacularly). Aside from the perimeter defense, there was no telling how many magi were inside, so anything obvious was right out. Furthermore, I still wasn't quite sure if they had figured out that the Rin they had with them wasn't from this dimension. I was confident in her acting abilities and sure that the personalities of the two women were close enough, but one could always end up asking a question she didn't know the answer to. If that was the case, they might have noticed the tracking spell I was using and this was a trap. If we were made, we could always just let it be known that we're apprentices to Zelretch, but playing the Z-card isn't exactly reliable. Most wouldn't believe us, and the Sorcerer himself gets rather irked at us when we use his name to get out of situations, and that results in… punishment.

I gave a slight shiver as I tried to suppress the memory of the last time he was displeased with me. I don't know how a universe came to be where everyone looked like zombified clowns and spoke in nothing but (incredibly bad) rhyme, but I do know that I wish I never knew such a place existed.

Shaking my head of such thoughts, I walked across the street to an alley made by the 5 story office building and the one adjacent to it. In any case, I had to get into that building, and I had to do it quietly. I wouldn't be able to take on whatever defenses they most assuredly had if I just walked in the front door, and I didn't know if I had enough time to set up any kind of decent plan. Once in position, I quietly invoked "Lightning Bruiser, Wall Jump." and proceeded to spring from wall to wall, scaling up the side of the building.

In my brief climb upwards, I quickly went over the Tropes that might be useful in the next few minutes. Anyone who had browsed TvTropes would consider this either a very daunting task, considering the vast number of Tropes that exist, or very easy, just picking a very extremely powerful ones. In either case, anyone who has the slightest idea of what I'm capable of would consider me a huge threat of unknown capabilities, which is an idea I like to reinforce. The list I was going through was on the shorter side, though not for the reason some might think. The truth of the matter was that the selection of Tropes I can actually use in any kind of meaningful way is a really small fraction of the total number that I know. My exact skill set is somewhat scattered, due to power requirements, personal preferences and training, and a number of other strange little rules that I sometimes have trouble keeping track of. However, I do have what I consider to be my primary Tropes, which are tropes for which I have the most skill, experience, and power to use, and those can be categorized in a simple (if somewhat embarrassing) sentence:

My primary Tropes are the ones used by 1990's action movie heroes.

Like many other things, I blame Archer for this. Given how he basically acted like a 90's action movie hero for the entirety of the Grail War, it seems that those Tropes were the things I ended up absorbing the most from him during out battle. It's a very useful skill set to be sure, and I've both broadened and strengthened it through training and experience, but it always reminds me that the things I can do are far outnumbered by the things I can't.

With a final jump, I landed as lightly as I could on the roof, cutting prana to Wall Jump but keeping my physical enhancement active. Walking quietly to the rooftop door, I gently put my hand on it and felt for the bounded field. Though I couldn't be certain, it was almost guaranteed that the field could detect whenever something went in and out of it, so just walking in would announce my presence. With care, I pushed a small amount of my od into the field. I wasn't nearly skilled enough with Bounded Fields to think of disabling it or bypassing it; all the little burst did was disrupt the flow of prana a bit. Someone watching the field was sure to notice, even if they didn't know what it meant, and they would come to investigate.

Which was what I was counting on.

I stepped off to the side to a dark spot on the roof, turned on my Trope vision, and waited. Sooner than I thought, I spotted a crow flying up over the lip of the building, and my vision confirmed that it was a familiar. Mentally, I invoked my magecraft.

Avert Calling Your Attacks. Improbable Aiming Skills. Guns Akimbo + Abnormal Ammo: Tranquilizer Dart.

As I felt the familiar weight of the two pistols settle into my hands, I snapped off a quick shot at the crow, hitting it in the side. The effect was almost immediate, with the crow swiftly falling to the roof, but otherwise unharmed. Hopefully, that will cause the magus who owns that familiar to come investigate, but won't concern him enough to raise some kind of alert. Ideally, he wouldn't know what to think.

Hell, if I had the skill for it, I would have used Mushroom Samba darts. I don't know what a crow would hallucinate about, but I pretty such it would confuse the hell out of the magus connected to it. Inciting confusion and chaos in my opponents is how I prefer to operate after all; I barely ever know what I'm doing, so why should they?

I moved again, this time lying down on the small top of the roof entrance. It was about a minute later when the door opened, and a man stepped out carefully scanning the rooftop. As I was up and behind him, I was out off his field of view for the moment, and peering over the edge of my own position into the stairwell behind him revealed that he was alone. Deciding to not wait and see if he had some kind of sensor ability, I fired a second shot in the man's neck and he crumpled to the ground. I proceeded to swing myself down and head down the stairwell. Now anyone else watching the field would think that I was magus I just tranquilized coming back into the building. It wouldn't be long before they got wise and realized they couldn't find him, but it would give me a few extra minutes.

* * *

Unfortunately, an extra few minutes turned out to not be nearly enough time to search a five story building while avoiding any magi I happened to run across. The building itself appeared to be under renovation, which is probably why they were able to use it with impunity (at least after hypnotizing the construction workers anyway). Magi were restricting themselves to the completed first three floors, and there were about two dozen of them by my count. Sneaking between the cubicles wasn't too hard at first, but when word spread that one of their own was missing, my job got significantly harder.

I ended up back on the 4th floor, quickly finding myself trapped as magi were in every stairwell. When I here footsteps behind me, I stiffed a curse and ducked into the nearest room, which appeared to be a copier room. The floor wasn't quite finished, but it was close enough that they had started moving in office equipment, as evident with the copy machine I shared the room with. As I carefully looked out the small glass window in the door, I saw that the magi were systemically searching each room they came across, and my own was not far away. I franticly looked around for a means of escape, but found none. Sure there was an air vent, but the size of the grate made it clear that this air vent was much too small for an Air Vent Passageway, something that made me feel highly indignant. In my opinion, all air vents should conform to the Nakatomi protocols, damn it! That just left me, some stacks of paper, the copy machine, the box the copy machine came in…

…Oh what the hell, it always worked for Solid Snake.

I managed to flip the box and slip under it just before I heard the door open and a light British voice say "Not in here."

Unlike the box of the implausibly cloned super agent, the one I was in didn't have a convenient handle hole to look through, so I had to make do with just my hearing. I heard a second, deeper voice speak up. "This is getting very suspicious. Are you sure the field showed Lawrence coming back into the building?"

There was a pause. "Well, something crossed the bounded field after he left it."

"I don't like it. Do you think MBI has somehow found us again and sent one of their little pets?"

"So far, they've used teams to assault us," the lighter voice said, "but I'm starting to think that's a definite possibility."

"I still don't see why you're dragging me around for this." A third voice interrupted. This one was female, somewhat haughty, and very, very familiar. '_Well, the good news is I've found Rin…_'

"Because you still haven't been able to explain why you were down in the loading docks when the attack came," The first man said with a slight sneer in his voice. "And considering how you were butting heads with Eltanwise ever since you got here, well, it doesn't exactly put you in a good position."

"So what, are you saying I'm your prisoner now? I won't stand for this!" she said, channeling the patented Tohsaka indigence.

"Considering your circumstances, I think you should be happy that we're just keeping an eye on you," said the second. "At this point, it wouldn't be unbelievable if you were accused of betraying the Association. After all, how did MBI mange to find us so many times?"

Rin simple gave a huff, her footsteps audible as she strode into the small room. "You should be happy that I'm putting up with this nonsense at all."

I gave a small grimace as I thought about the current situation. They definitely believed that she was this dimension's Rin, but recent events had made her suspect. That would make it harder to get her out of the building. My mind raced as I tried to think of a plan.

Of course, that became a little more difficult when she sat on me.

It took ever bit of willpower I had to not shout in surprise when the box crumpled down a bit and I felt a heavy weight settle on my upper back. I knew it was Rin, as I was sure that if either of the two men tried to sit on me, my now precarious crouching position would be more along the lines of sprawled out on the floor. I wasn't sure, but I think I felt Rin stiffen after a moment of sitting on me (it was difficult to tell as I had to do so through a layer of cardboard and had only her behind to go by).

Whatever the case, it seemed that the other two mean didn't notice as the second man said "Anyway, we need to put everyone on alert. One of those things could be in the building with us. Get everyone you can who can use sensor magic and run over the building again. I'm going to go check the roof."

I grimaced some more at this. There wasn't much I could do against sensor magic while trapped in a sat upon box, not to mention that they would soon find the unconscious body I left. It looked like I would soon have to abandon subtly for a more direct approach. If I moved fast enough, I could grab Rin and jump out a window before anyone knew what was happening. The magi would of course pursue, but hopefully I could lose them in the city, and it wasn't like I had many other options.

I briefly tensed and listened for the right moment to act, but was quickly derailed when one of Rin's leg's idly kicked the box, giving me pause. "Well, you can do that without me." She said. "I'm staying right here."

I heard an angry growl. "You've clearly yet to learn your place, Tohsaka. We're not going to ignore orders just because you're having a fit."

"My place? It would be a disgrace on the Toksaka name if I let you lackeys drag me around like a dog on a leash for any longer!"

There was some more irritated grumbling before it stopped. Then the second man spoke up, a hint of smugness in his voice. "Fine. If you don't want to be on a leash, how about a cage?" With that, I heard the door slam shut.

"Hey!" Rin said as she got up off of me. "What are you doing? How dare you lock me in here! Let me out!" She started pounding on the door, but it died off quick enough. I heard a light huff. "Well, I suppose that works too." She said.

From in the box, I heard her footsteps coming back towards me, and thankfully she didn't sit on me again. Unfortunately, she started kicking the box instead.

After brief scuffle and one sound muffling Bounded Field later, the two of us found ourselves looking at each other rather annoyed. "What the hell was that for?" I asked in irritation.

"That's for sneaking into a Clock Tower safe house in a cardboard box." She replied coolly. "I don't care how popular Metal Gear Solid is, that doesn't actually work in real life!"

I gave a grunt. "Well, it was working just fine for me until you sat on me. And for that matter, how did you know it was me? Theoretically it could have been anyone."

Rin arched an eyebrow. "Besides the fact that I knew you would be trying to find me, what do you think the odds are that someone else would think to do that?"

I opened my mouth to respond, but then I closed it in a frown. "Ok, fair point." I conceded. "In any case, I don't know how much time we have. I left an unconscious body on the roof which they'll be finding any second now."

Rin gave it a moment's thought before saying "If you stay in here with me, I should be able to hide you from any sensor magic they might use. I doubt they'll be looking in here again anyway since the decided to turn it into my impromptu cell. They'll be sending scouts out in the morning, so that will be the best chance to leave."

My frown deepened at this. "Alright, what were you thinking of? I'm sure we could get out of the building fast enough if we had to but-"

"We are not leaving." She interrupted. "You are."

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

"I mean that we won't get another opportunity like this to have someone on the inside of the Mage's Association here in Shin Tokyo. They already think I'm one of them, so I'll be able to tell you what their next move is."

My expression became darker. "No. Absolutely not. It's far too dangerous. I heard those other two magi say that you were already under suspicion. You can't possible hope to imitate this dimension's Rin under scrutiny." There was no way I would allow her to take that kind of risk.

Rin, however, didn't budge. "You know as well as I do that the Clock Tower won't give up after this. They're going to try again, and this time they won't try to be subtle. Any information I can learn about their plans could save lives, and you know it."

I clenched my fists in frustration. "What about your life? I can't let you do something so risky! Not when-"

"-it was your idea to stay?" She completed for me. My mouth snapped shut and she continued. "When are you going to learn to stop taking everything on yourself? You can't expect me to just sit on the sides every time you try to help someone and nearly burn yourself out doing so. You're not the only one willing to take risks you know. I'm here for you, anytime you need it." Her expression softened a bit and a wiry expression crossed her face. "Besides, I want to help that hopeless other you as well, if only so the other me can beat some sense into him."

I stared at her with girt teeth for a moment before giving an exasperated sigh, covering my face with my hand as I did so. It was times like this I wish my lover wasn't so brilliant. She usually was better at arguing and logic than I was, not to mention stubborn. I could tell that I wouldn't be able to get her to budge on the issue. Eventually, I muttered "I'm pretty sure she's doing that right now."

"Oh, so you did find her." Rin said. "I must say, I was rather confused at first when the magi started acting like I should be here. Just what did happen?"

I gave her a brief rundown of what happened after we lost sight of each other. The trap, Eltanwise's death, Uzume's betrayal, and this dimension's Rin and Saber.

She gave a mirthless laugh at the last one. "That's not going to end well, is it?"

"Who knows," I replied. "Maybe it will be Play for Laughs."

She gave a sigh at this. "Shirou…"

"After all, there's only a slight chance that one of them will start to Murder the Hypotenuses."

Her tone became slightly harder. "Shirou,"

"On the other hand, maybe he'll just go crazy and sleep with them all at once. Miya won't be able to stop him if she's a part of it too."

Now she was frustrated. "Shirou."

"It will confuse people if you keep calling me that. So long as we're here, I'm Troper-"

"No you're not!" Rin suddenly yelled, her voice carrying enough of an edge that I took a step back from her. "Damn it Shirou, you've been acting like this more and more since you got here!"

"L-like what?" I stuttered.

"Like everything's a joke! Like nothing actually gets to you!" She looked me in the eyes as she said this, as if daring me to deny it. "You're acting like Archer!"

I felt my entire body stiffen as she said this. Archer never did take anything seriously, only rarely bothering to put any real effort into anything. He was a little like Gilgamesh in that regard, but he was more apathetic about it rather than arrogant. In truth he was a much more bitter and cynical man, for all his power unable to change his story. For him, nothing really did matter.

I couldn't have been acting like that… was I?

Rin gave another sigh at my shocked expression, her shoulders slumping as she did so. "I'm sorry. I know that's just how you behave to throw people off. It's just… you've been doing it more and more. I'm starting to worry that someday you'll just lose yourself in it. I'm worried that you're losing hope."

I turned away from her not sure what I should feel. Was it true? Had it been so long looking for Saber that I had begun to lose hope? Was I turning into that shell of a man whose ending he could never change?

The rest of the night was spent in an awkward silence between the two of us. I just wish I didn't have to do it in a dark box.


	23. Chapter 16: Now What Do We Do?

I blinked wearily as I came to, trying to remember how I fell unconscious in the first place. '_What happened? I arrived back at the inn with Troper, Rin was about to say something to me, __then Yukari came in and was about to start a fight with Rin and Saber, then Fuji-nee and Iliya started yelling at me about harem expansion-'_

I blinked again, but this time in surprise at that last memory of being chased around my old training dojo by my old neighbor and enemy. I thought back the slightly earlier memory of me passing out, and figured that it was a dream. I then thought back to the much earlier memory of Troper telling me that his abilities caused really weird dreams, and figured that it was his fault due to the trope he cast on me. In any case, I decided to push those thoughts to the back of my mind for the time being.

As I sat up, I found myself to be in my room, likely placed there after I passed out. More importantly though, I saw that Rin and Saber were sitting on either side of me.

I tensed, but neither of them spoke. The three of us simply looked at each other uncomfortably, not sure were to begin. I thought Rin had something to say earlier, but it seemed she changed her mind or lost her nerve.

"So," I eventually said, trying to break the silence. "How long was I out?"

"Three hours." Saber said. "We've only be in here with you for the past half hour."

I nodded as I took stock of myself, stretching my limbs as I did so. I still felt tired, but less so than I had this morning. It would still take another night's rest to get me back up to full, but now at least the weariness wasn't seeping into my bones. I also saw (with some confusion) that I was in a different set of clean clothes. "When and how did I get changed?" I asked.

"That's not important." Rin said, though turning to her I saw a light blush on her cheeks.

"Did you want to talk to me about something?" I asked slowly. I still wasn't quite sure how this conversation was going to go. The two of them seemed to have calmed down considerably since last night, though that didn't mean they weren't still upset. Lord knows what they must think of the whole situation now that they've had time to consider it.

Rin rubbed the back of her head sheepishly, in a motion which I was sure she had picked up from me. "Well, I wasn't planning on talking so much as inflicting pain on you until I came up with a better idea, but it was decided that that probably wasn't the best way to handle this." Her eyes briefly flicker to Saber before turning back to me. "I was kind of hoping I would know what to say to you by the time you woke up, but all I have is… why? I know what you said last night, but you have to have a better explanation than that."

I gave a small sigh and proceeded to explain myself as best I could. It was mostly the same thing I had told Troper when he had asked about it, though the words seemed somewhat hollow in my ears. I didn't believe that it would justify my actions to them, but at least it might help them understand.

Rin simply stared at me with a small frown on her face as I talked, and Saber kept her expression neutral. After I finished there was a pause before Rin said "So, you really thought you'd never see us again?"

I gave a small wince at the edge in her voice. "Well, yes. I'm just one guy against the entire Mage's Association. There was nothing I could do to get around that, and if I did somehow met with you again, you'd probably end up sharing my fate. Hell, I'm pretty sure that would have happened already if Troper's Rin wasn't impersonating you right now."

Rin blinked in surprise at this information while Saber said "Even so, it seems that you just gave up on us while we were still trying to find you."

"It's not like I wanted to!" I exclaimed. "I would like nothing more than to just go back to the way things were, but I can't live in the past. Not when there's so much I have to do now."

"Things like your harem of alien bimbos." Rin said darkly.

I turn to the magus, my own face darkening as I did so. "You know that's not true, Rin. And you shouldn't trivialize the plight of an entire species because of this." I may have said that with more anger in my voice that I would have liked, but Rin's low blow had really gotten under my skin. The idea that she thought I would abandon her just because I had ended up with a number of women attracted to me was rather insulting.

Rin opened her mouth to give a retort, but she stopped herself. Instead she gave a sigh and rubbed her eyes. "I know. You're only person I know that I can trust is telling the truth when they say that. But that still doesn't change the fact that you slept with another woman! How the hell am I supposed to feel about that?"

I looked at the ground. "I was hoping you'd understand-"

"What I understand in that you did it for a completely stupid reason! You did it not because you wanted to, but because you felt like you had to! Since when is sex something that you have to do regardless of what you want?"

"Uh, Rin?" Saber hesitantly asked her master. "What about the magical contract you made with Shirou at the end of the Grail War?" While we did have developing feeling for each other at the time, Saber was right in that the main reason we preformed the tantric ritual then was to make me strong enough to fight Gilgamesh and keep him from wiping out most of mankind.

Rin glared at her Servant. "Not. Helping. Besides, those were two different situations. If we didn't do that, billions of people would have died. What would have happened if you hadn't slept with Akitsu, Shirou?"

"Umm… she would have remained a broken wreak of a person, constantly trying to fill the empty void inside of her?" I guessed.

"Grrrah!" Rin shouted in frustration. "That still doesn't mean you had to jump straight to sex to help! Did you even think of trying something else first? Like maybe Rule Breaker? Or more research? Or maybe just getting her a therapist?"

I frowned at this. "Yes, I did consider those, but I didn't know if they would be effective. I have no idea what Rule Breaker would do to her given her alien physiology, and I'm so far from knowing anything about magical exobiology that I wouldn't even know where to begin with more research. Furthermore, I think you've realized by now that the Sekirei are psychologically different from humans, so I don't think a therapist would help. A tantric ritual was the best option I had."

"And you always have to do everything you can to help, don't you?" She said with a hint of bitterness. "No matter what it might cost."

"Yes." I said firmly.

Rin stared at me for a few more moments before giving a tired sigh. "Shirou… I just don't know what to do." She said dejectedly. "Some of what you said makes sense, some of it doesn't, but regardless this entire situation is so messed up I don't know how to handle it. Whatever you reasons might have been, we're still hurt. And that's not even going into the all the other aliens flocking around you. You said it yourself, they're not going anywhere, but I still don't have any intension of sharing you with anyone other than Saber. Do you have any bright ideas?"

"I… no." I said, feeling helpless. I turned to Saber, but she just shook her head as well.

"I still believe that a series of duels is the simplest way to handle this." The King of Knights said. "But I doubt the outcome will be a particularly happy one."

The three of us stared dejectedly at each other for awhile longer. Eventually, I said "Well, what do we do now?"

"I just said I don't know!" Rin snapped in frustration before calming down. "Look, maybe we should focus on other things for the time being. Root knows that we have enough to deal with." She said with a grunt. "For right now we should focus on staying alive and stopping the Sekirei Plan."

"And after that, we figure out what to do with our relationship?" I prompted.

She didn't say anything at first, instead looking away with a blank expression on her face. "I don't know if I can forgive you right now." I felt my heart stop cold in my chest, but she continued. "I know you had you reasons and this entire situation isn't your fault, but I still can't…" she trailed off, her voice choking a little. She got to her feet and walked to the door, stopping before it and turning back to face me. "I hope with everything I have that won't be the case when everything else is done, because I don't want to think about what I'll do if it is."

Rin opened the door and looked back at Saber, but the Servant said "I'll be just a second." Rin looked a little surprised, but walked to the hall a moment later.

Trying to keep the feeling of despair from growing any larger, I turned to Saber, who regarded me with an uncomfortable frown. "I understand." She said softly, somewhat to my surprise. "I know what it means to be bound by honor. However it happened, you became responsible for these… Sekirei. It became your responsibly to do whatever you could to take care of them. While I wish it wasn't the case or that you found another way, you did what your sense of honor thought was right."

"Saber…" I whispered, stunned by her words.

She learned closer to me, pressing her forehead against mine and closing her eyes. "I am not going to lose you again because of this." She said. "I forgive you, Shirou."

I sat perfectly still for a few moments longer before I couldn't hold it back any longer. With a choking sound from my throat and tears welling up in my eyes, I embraced Saber as I whispered "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh god I'm sorry…" over and over again, realizing that I should have done so from the start.

It was a while after that I managed to get control of myself again, and found Saber giving me a small smile. "Don't worry," she said. "I'm sure Rin will forgive you to. She just needs time."

"Rin isn't exactly the forgiving type…" I remarked dryly.

Saber shifted a bit uncomfortably at this. "Well, perhaps you could start trying to win her over with shows of affection." She perk-up as she had an idea. "Perhaps a finely crafted dinner would be a good start. I remember Miya saying that she had some duck stored in the fridge. A roasted duck covered in sauces along with a side of dumplings, rice and-"

"Who am I making this dinner for again?" I asked with a wiry grin.

"You're making it for Rin." Saber said primly. "Of course, I will need to test the quality of food before hand to insure the meal well be good enough to serve as a form of apology." She would have seemed a lot more sincere with this reply if I didn't see a small bit of drool coming from the corner of her mouth.

I gave a small chuckle and the two of us left the room, in much higher spirits than I would have thought.

* * *

"That's… a lot to take in." Haruka said as he sat back, mulling over what I had just told him. "So it was another Ashikabi that kidnapped Yukari, and he was blackmailing one of your housemates into working for him. But why did he kidnap her are not just… you know."

I hesitated as I tried to think of a reason other than luring me into a trap. Since Haruka had come for diner, he was naturally curious with how the whole rescue operation had gone. I had obliged him while carefully trying to leave out any references to magic, though that resulted in me making up a good deal of what happened.

I was about to come up with a response when Yukari interjected "He said he wanted to marry me!"

The rest of the table looked at her incredulously, clearly not expecting this response. "You're kidding…" Homura said with a twitching eyebrow. "He wanted you to marry him after he kidnapped you? That is the most hackneyed villain plot I've ever heard."

I gave a sigh as I looked at my sister and hoped that she was exaggerating. I managed to have a talk with her after my discussion with Rin and Saber, and it seemed she settled into a sort of truce with the two. Still, considering how eventful the past few days have been for her, it was probable that Yukari was still a bit high strung, so she could just be falsely remembering things.

"Ah yes, the old And Now You Must Marry Me approach." Troper said as he stroked his bandana covered chin. I still didn't want Haruka to know about him, so he had opted keep his disguise on during the meal. This of course made him look ridiculous, but he didn't seem to care and I long ago decided to stop questioning what Troper does. Frankly, I just glad that he didn't decide to go with the whole Time Police excuse again.

"Uh, Troper-san?" Haruka asked hesitantly. "Why are you still wearing that at the dinner table?"

"Religious beliefs." He said vaguely, and he continued speaking before the young man could question this confusing statement. "Anyway, are we all on the same page now? Because we need to figure out what were going to do next."

Rin, Saber, and I looked at each other a little uncomfortably before I spoke up. "Well, I still think our main priority is to stop the Sekirei Plan. Unfortunately, since the plan has come to a halt due to… outside factors, I still don't know all the details about it. Furthermore, said outside factors could be a serious problem in the future if we're not careful."

Haruka and Kuno looked confused at this, but didn't say anything. Troper said "True, but I have that covered for now, remember? We shouldn't be taken by surprise in any case. Normally I would say you should just go back to your wait-and-see policy, but I think that there's one thing you might want to take care of as soon as possible."

I gave a small nod and a grimace. "Higa and Uzume." I said. With Eltanwise's death and MBI storming his company, the man was likely running out of allies and desperate. There was no telling what he would do in his current state, and Uzume would probably be the one who would come to harm because of it. Turning to Matsu, I said "Matsu, I need you to find out where Uzume's Ashikabi was being kept. If we're lucky, maybe he hasn't moved her yet." Normally I would have pursued the man and the cloth Sekirei as soon as I knew my sister was safe, but considering everything that had happened in the past 24 hours… well, I could only hope that those distractions hadn't cost Uzume or her partner something precious.

Matsu nodded and started typing away on her tablet, but even as she did she gave me a questioning look. "Understood Shirou-tan. But, what are you going to do when you find them? It still doesn't change the fact that Chiho-tan needs Higa's treatment to live. I don't suppose one of your… talents could fix that?"

Before I could respond that I had a few ideas, Troper cut me off. "Oh, don't worry," he said with a gleam in his eye that gave me an uncomfortable feeling of doom. "I have a plan."


	24. A Crack in Tropes: Author Wank

Shirou found himself standing in the in the cross between the White Void Room and the Featureless Plane of Disembodied Tropes that made up his Reality Marble. He idly wondered what he was doing there for a few moments before he figured that he was probably dreaming as the last thing he remember was going to bed after outlining his plan to rescue Chiho and Uzume. It was a little odd, given that the little of what he remembered from his dreams tended to be a lot weirder than this, but he wasn't going look a gift horse in the mouth. Although, now that he had some time to look at it… "Man, this place looks boring. I mean, I guess the floating text and hyperlinks are cool, but it's not much of a visual."

"Yeah, the author originally wanted it to look like a library throughout different periods in history, but _I Put on my Robe and Wizard Hat_ beat him to it." Shirou turned around at the sudden voice and found the speaker to be an identical copy of himself sitting at a poker table with a number of other people. "As it is, he just decided to go with a TVTropes website motif."

Shirou gave a small frown as he looked at his counterpart, something tickling in the deepest part of his memory. "You're… Troper!Shriou, right?"

The man's eyebrows moved up at this. "I'm surprised that you actually know and or remember my name. And can pronounce the exclamation point. Anyway, yes that's me. Your subconscious, or id, or Anthromorphic Personification of you powers, or whatever."

"Huh. It's been a while since I've dreamed as myself."

"Eh, that joke's run its course. And you're not thinking of yourself as Troper as things would get confusing between the two of us. Besides, Rin would get mad at you again."

Shirou's frown deepened. "Wait a minute, didn't you tell me the last time we talked that I couldn't come down to this level of my own mind without losing my sense of self?" He paused for a moment to scratch the back of his head. "Though now that I think about it, I do feel oddly distant from myself for some reason."

Troper!Shirou rolled his eyes. "Oh, now you start remembering these things. Ok, first of all, it's just third person perspective. You'll get used to it. Secondly-"

"Oy! When are you two going to stop talking and start making out already?" The two Shrious looked over in surprise at the new speaker. He was sitting on the other side of the poker table, dressed in a red and black body suit and had number of weapons strapped to his person. It was hard to mistake the Merc with the Mouth for anyone else. "I mean, we all know that at least half of your subscribers are only reading this so they can watch the two of you get it on."

"We're not doing it!" the two trope inclined individuals replied in unison.

A giggle came from Troper!Shirou's right, and Shirou glanced over to see a high school girl with long brown hair hanging past her knees and grin that seemed like it was etched on her face. "As amusing as self Yaoi would be, even an idiot like yourself should be able to tell this isn't that kind of fanfic. It would be as out of place as if you suddenly developed a relationship with those little yellow boxes of yours."

Deadpool waved his arms in front of him franticly. "Oh hell no! My only true love is Bea Arthur! Besides, me and the box are just bros!"

Just then a 2d yellow box popped up next to his head, inscribed with the text 'But what about that time in Vegas?'

"Shh! No one must know of our forbidden love!"

Troper!Shirou Sweat Dropped as Deadpool continued to argue with his thought bubble, before turning to the girl. "Thanks for distracting him Ajimu-san."

The girl with a quadrillion superpowers dismissively waved her hand. "Oh, it was nothing. Although switching genres like that would probably help to keep the fic from stagnating, as everyone can tell the author started running out of ideas around chapter 15."

She received a flat look in response. "Thanks. Any other brilliant advice?"

"Sayuri think there should be moar fire!" Shouted a small girl at the other end of the table. She looked to be about 5, with blonde hair and red eyes, though those were not as noticeable as pair of fox ears on her head and the nine fluffy tails swaying behind her.

"That's your solution to everything!"

"Cause fire fixes evewything!"

Shirou blinked in surprise at this latest interruption. "Wait wait wait! You invited Sayuri to a poker game? Isn't that how her whole mess got started in the first place?"

Troper!Shirou looked sheepish. "Yeah, but she threatened to set me on fire if I didn't let her come."

Shirou begrudgingly nodded after a moment. "Fair enough. But still, why am I here?"

His… something or other gave a sigh. "Probably because the author wanted to say some things but didn't feel like addressing the Fourth Wall directly, so he threw you in here so we could have a convenient expository conversation."

"Umm, why? Shouldn't he be writing the next chapter?"

"That's the problem. Tell me, do even know the details of your awesome 'Save Uzume and Chiho' plan?"

"What? Of course I do, I start with…" Shirou trailed off and blinked. "Wait, what the…?"

Troper!Shirou gave him a knowing look. "Exactly. You can't remember the plan you came up with last night because the author hasn't thought out it yet. To put it simply, he's stuck. Has been for the past few months."

The trope powered magus blinked in surprise. "Seriously? He can't think of anything to advance the plot?"

"I wouldn't say that. He has actually written some stuff, but it's all out of chronological order. He still has some more ideas for the story, it's just that he's having trouble coming up with a suitably satisfying rescue plot for the next chapter. He could just skip it and get to the part he already has planned, but he thinks that would be too much of an Ass Pull."

"And it's taken him months to get to this point? What the hell has he been doing all this time?"

"Well… there's also another reason for that." Troper!Shirou said as he gestured off to his left.

Shirou looked at the last two people at the table which he hadn't looked too closely at for narratively convenient reasons and found them to be two more copies of himself. The first was rather distinctive looking with a number burn scars visible on his face and dressed in a priest suit/overcoat combo that was very similar to Kotomine's. The man gave a friendly smile. "Hello, I'm Shirou Kotomine Sahashi, Executor for the Church, Master of Nero, and Incarnation of Fire."

Shirou looked at him for a moment before saying. "That's just weird."

Troper!Shirou gave a shrug. "Maybe, but the author has received more requests to continue his story than anything else he's ever done."

Fire!Shirou gave a smug grin. "I guess you could say I'm what's hot right now."

Shirou cringed as he felt his bile rise at how terrible that pun was. Still he had other things that he was more interested in. "Master or Nero? Are you taking about Emperor Nero of Rome?"

"Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus." The man confirmed. "She was summoned as Servant Saber."

"Wait, 'she'? Wasn't Nero a man?"

Fire!Shirou arched an eyebrow. "No, she was actually a short blond woman. Besides, what about King Arthur?"

"…Touché." Shirou frowned in annoyance. "Ok, is every Saber beside Siegfried a short blonde woman described by history as a man?"

Troper!Shriou rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Well, Joan of Arc was always known as a woman, but her legend has her taking the traditional role of a man, so yes I'd say that counts."

Ajimu tilted her head to the side. "What about Gawain?"

Deadpool gave a snort. "Are you kidding? Have you seen that guy's picture? He's about as male as Homura if you know what I mean."

Fire!Shirou looked confused. "What are you talking about?"

"You'll find out later." Everyone else at the table replied simultaneously.

Shirou then took a look at the other man who shared his appearance, and this one looked far more normal than anyone else at the table. The only distinguishing thing about him was that he was currently reading a rather large book with a group of people standing dramatically on the cover. Shirou leaned closer to read the title. "Exalted Core Rulebook?"

Troper!Shirou gave a sigh as he looked at the man. "I keep telling you, you're not going to remember any of that when you get back."

"Maybe not consciously, but I'm hoping I'll internalize at least a little bit subconsciously." He replied without looking up.

Shirou tilted his head. "So what's your deal?"

The man looked up at Shirou and a golden sunburst began to glow on his forehead. "I'm identical to _In Flight_ Shirou save for the fact that I seem to have had a spiritual super-weapon from another dimension grafted to my soul. In addition to just making me better at everything, I get host of new abilities as well as the memories of a dead man who went insane." He set the book down and started rifling through a pile of more books at his feet. "Where's that Scroll of Errata? I need to look up Holistic Miracle Understanding."

Troper!Shirou spoke up in the tone of a commercial speaker. "Side effects of Solar Exaltation include excessive Epicness, an ever expanding harem that defies all logic, potential loss of identity due to past lives, uncontrollable Limit Breaks, and for the narrative to suddenly shift into Purple Prose."

Shirou gave a sigh and rubbed his forehead as he turned back to the first counterpart. "So, that's it for me? People have lost interest in my story so the author is going to focus on his other creations from now on?"

"Well, yes." Troper!Shirou admitted. "But not forever. He still has every intention of finishing this story, though he might cut corners to do so. If it comes down to it, he'll just post the parts of the story he can definitely write - including the dramatic reveal of what happened to your Saber, which will be coming up soon."

The trope incarnation gave a small huff. "At least I can still remember that."

"Yes, he's had that planned for a while." Troper!Shirou confirmed before giving a small frown. "Although the story of your Archer has changed somewhat since he posted it. He came up with a better and more concrete idea for your future self, so he did some retconing. People might want to re-read that part of chapter 15. In any case, if the author does decide to go for the abridged version to wrap everything up here, he'll stop posting the chapters on the forums as they will mostly just be focused on you rather than _In Flight_ proper."

"And then he'll finally start writing more of _Unlimited Trope Works_?" Shirou asked hopefully.

"Umm… maybe?"

Shirou's shoulders sagged. "I don't suppose there's some way to motivate him, is there?"

It was then the rather excitable kyuubi interjected "Sayuri can motiwate your author-chan!"

_WOOSH!_ The entirety of Shirou's Reality Marble burst into flames. Which was impressive considering it was empty save for floating text.

"Mugyuu!" Wiggle wiggle.

Fire!Shirou eyes lit up like stars upon seeing the inferno around them. "I have found my new God!"

This does not bode well.

A/N: Sayuri is from _Naruto Genkyouien_ by Daneel Rush.


	25. Chapter 17: Mood Whiplash

A/N: So, in light of all the other stories I'm writing at the moment, I am going to abridge the rest of this fic. What this means is I'll do the scenes I've planned while throwing in ideas I had thought of while skipping a good deal of the narrative. It will feel disjoined and incomplete, and for that I apologize. However, I only have so much time to write, and so many things to write about. Right now, I want to give Troper the end he deserves.

* * *

"Ok, don't panic," Troper said as he treaded water next to me. "I'm pretty sure we can swim to shore before any of the heavily armed patrol boats notice us."

"I hate you."

* * *

**Several hours earlier**

* * *

"Alright, I see the target now," I said into the walkie-talkie while peering through the binoculars in my other hand. "Matsu, you're sure this is the right one?"

"Of course, Shirou-tan!" replied the hacker's voice over the radio. "Without the No. 22, Higa-tan has no hopes of hiding anything from me, especially since he didn't think to get a new phone."

I gave a small grunt of acknowledgment as I eyed the ambulance turning around a corner from my vantage point several buildings away. It had taken less time than I had thought for Matsu to catch a break as to the whereabouts of Higa, even though all she had was a cell phone. Still, even though we had his location, we couldn't be sure he was in the same place as both Uzume and Chiho, the real reasons why we were going after him in the first place.

Which is why when we picked up a conversation on said phone that was about moving Chiho to a new location, we decided that this was the best time to act. Higa's possession of Uzume's Ashikabi was only thing keeping her in his service, so we were going to hijack the vehicle mid-transit. Of course, it wouldn't be as simple as that given that Higa would undoubtedly be watching, so a slightly more elaborate plan than smash and grab was in order.

"Are you sure your plan will work?" I asked, turning to look at Troper who was standing next to me as an additional spotter.

"Why wouldn't it?" He replied. "My plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity."

I gave a frown. "Are we thinking of the same plan? Because I think your confusing simplicity for complexity addiction."

"Quiet you. Besides, are you sure that your plan will work?"

"Well, Avalon worked before when I used it to heal Miya, so I don't see why it wouldn't work on Chiho." I raised an eyebrow at him. "I don't see why you would doubt it. You've got on of your own after all."

Troper glanced down at himself and twisted his mouth slightly, as if he was looking through his body at his own Avalon. He then shook his head and looked back at the street. "It's almost time, keep your eyes open."

I followed his gaze and watched as the ambulance got closer and closer to a particular pair of alleyways across the street from one another. Moments before it reached it, I shouted into my walkie "Now!"

From their position in the alleys, Homura and Tsukiumi unleashed a blast of their respective elements angled upward, the two attacks meeting about the middle of the street. A huge eruption of steam expanded and obscured the vehicle along with a good portion of the road. Then, coming from both ends of the street were another four ambulances of similar make which drove straight into the cloud.

"How did you get those anyway?" I asked my counterpart.

"A combination of bribery, fast talking, and five finger discounts." He replied nonchalantly, not taking his eyes off the cloud.

I frowned at him. "I don't think I like how casually you seem about breaking the law like this. Besides, what if people need those ambulances?"

He had the good grace to look embarrassed. "Sorry. It's sort of a side effect of traveling the multiverse with Zelretch for long enough. You just start seeing yourself as… outside of things. And don't worry, we're giving them back as soon as possible."

It wasn't ideal, but now wasn't exactly the time to do something about it. Most of my Sekirei, along with Rin, Saber, and oddly enough Hakura and his Sekirei were in those vehicles. This part of the plan was fairly simple: under the cover of the steam, we would swoop in and take out anyone who might resist, then all five would drive out in different directions. That would cause enough of a diversion to split up whatever forces Higa might have watching, which we would thin pick off one by one.

We also had to find Uzume at some point in this nonsense and tell her what was going on, but I wasn't sure how receptive she would be to a conversation. She had already given some thought to my magical healing abilities and had decided that it wouldn't be worth the risk. I hoped that I would be able to convince her otherwise.

A few dozen seconds later, a new voice crackled over the channel. "Everything's secure" Homura said. "We have her."

"Good. Let's scatter." Troper responded, and the vehicles rolled out of the rapidly disappearing mist and in different directions. Now it was my and Troper's job to keep watch on everything. Matsu would help from her control center in her room, but she couldn't see everything. And besides, the two of us would be needed to fight off any response that Higa's Sekirei would most assuredly give.

"Shirou-tan!" Matsu suddenly said on the coms. "I've got some people closing in on your position!"

_There we go_, I thought to myself. "So, how many of Higa's remaining Sekirei are we talking?"

"It's not them!" She exclaimed, casing me to feel confused. "It's the Disciplinary Squad! I'm getting reports from MBI that they're in the area and headed straight for you!"

I groaned out loud. "Great. Let's just hope that this is the only thing that goes wrong." I said in response to the Spanner in the Works.

This, of course, prompted Troper to turn toward me and gape. "You have got to be kidding me! Do you realize you've just doomed the mission?!"

I gave him a flat look. "I'm pretty sure that only applied to you. Besides, this probably is the worst thing that could happen."

"Oh really?! What if even more Ashikabi and Sekirei get involved?! What if you suddenly had an aneurysm?! What if the Blue suddenly shows up?!" He replied, going through increasingly improbably scenarios.

Being unable to take him seriously at this point, I remarked with some mirth "What if that girl with the blue hair shows up and starts becoming friends with your Rin?"

Troper froze and went completely pale. He then began to shake in terror. "They must never be allowed to meet!" he said with no small amount of fear.

"Because she'll find out you're a ruined man?"

"Worse! She might give Rin… _ideas._"

The way he sad that last word sent shivers down my spine for some reason. Maybe I shouldn't be making light of it…

Troper remained panicked for a few moments longer before he took a few deep breaths to calm himself. "Ok… no more thinking about that. Back to panicking about… what was I panicking about again?"

"About me, I should think." Karasuba said.

"Yes, thank you Karasuba. As I was saying, what if Kara-" Troper stopped mid-sentence and froze. The both us then slowly turned to the side and was greeted by the sight of the Black Sekirei standing near us, who we had completely missed while arguing with each other.

She looked back and forth between the two of us, and blush forming on her face as a rather unsettling smile crossed her lips. "Two Shiroui-chans…" she panted out, looking more excited with each second. I was pretty sure that she was the first female who, upon seeing the two of us, had that reaction imaging something other that me and my counterpart having intercourse. Of course, considering what the Blood Knight was probably thinking about instead, it really wasn't any better. "Oh, I don't know what's going on, but this is going to be the most fun I've had in ages!" She drew her blade in anticipation.

Troper gave a grimace as he pulled his pistols from his coat. "For the record, I'm blaming this on you."

I pulled my blades from my back. "Oh, bite me."

* * *

*Many shenanigans later*

* * *

"Well, that turned out as well as could be expected…" Troper said slowly as he pulled himself up on to the dock.

"Yes, except for the fact that we have no idea how everyone else did." I grumbled as I pulled myself up behind him. "We lost the walkie-talkies in the fight with Karasuba."

"Well, we'll just have to have faith in them." He replied, though his tone did note some concern. For a moment the two of us simply stood there, letting the water drip off of us.

The moment of respite did not last long though, as soon an ambulance was seen going around the bend of a nearby warehouse. We glanced at each other for a moment and eyed the vehicle warily, not sure if it was one of ours.

Fortunately, this turned out to be the case, as it stopped a short distance away from us and we were greeted by the sight of Rin, and (again) oddly enough Haruka and Kuno. "I knew it was a mistake to let you go off on your own." Rin said crossly as she approached us. "Letting one of you go unsupervised always caused trouble, I should have known that two of you would make it worse!"

"And I'm glad that you're fine as well…" I replied dryly. "How did it go, and why isn't Saber with you? Is Chiho-"

"She's fine." The magus waved off. "There was a great deal of confusion after the two of you became… preoccupied, but we still managed. Saber had to take care of Uzume when she showed up to keep the other woman from doing anything rash. Their probably back at the inn now."

"Yeah, it was pretty amazing!" Hakura added. "I didn't even know she was a Sekirei!"

The rest of us aside from his Sekirei exchanged glances before I turned to him. "You know, I'm actually pretty impressed that you decided to join in on this one."

"Yeah well…" he said, looked a little sheepish. "I got kinda tired of running. You were a bit… hard about it, but I can see why you want to fight and change things." He puffed up his chest a little. "Well, I'm going to do that from now o-"

The only warning I got was the scent a flare of magic power before I saw the bolt of light pierce through the young man's chest. There was a small splatter of blood before he crumpled to the ground. His Sekirei didn't even get to call out his name before there was a flash of light from her back and she fell as well, his death resulting in her termination.

The rest of us looked around in alarm and found a number of figures dropped down from the tops of nearby shipping container towers. I could tell from their scents that they were magi, and I could tell from their clothes that they were Enforcers. There were about 8 of them total, and two of them were holding someone in chains etched with symbols. That person was unmistakable Rin Tohsaka.

"Well, this is all very touching, but we have to get a move on." Said a new mage, who calmly walked out from behind the Enforcers. "Honestly, it seems like a waste to kill a potential specimen like that, but I'm sure that it will be enough trouble taking in you four alive." The man was of the unremarkable sort, with brown hair and plain if finely made clothing.

Troper's eyes widened at this sight before his face twisted into one of hate. "You!" he seethed out through his teeth. It was like he knew the man from somewhere, but I didn't understand how.

The man arched an eyebrow at this. "Oh? I did not know that you knew of Johan Einzbern." Shit. I was not on good terms with that family, considering I was at least partially responsible for the dismantling of the Grail system. If one of them had come to Shin Tokyo…

Regardless of my own thoughts, the man continued. "Then again, I did not expect to find… copies of yourself." He looked at the lot of us with a frown. "I wonder if this is due that annoying Wizard Marshall of ours." He gave a shrug. "Well, no matter. As you can see, we have your traitorous master already, and you are out numbered by a significant margin, so I would suggest that you give up now. I would give a more reasons as to why it is hopeless to resist, but there is a lot to be done in regards to that wretched company that's been giving us so much trouble, and less time to do it than I would like."

This was bad. There was no way we could handle this many magi. And with Troper's Rin held hostage, there wasn't much we could do before she was killed. I saw my Rin glance at her hand at the Command Spells tattooed there. She could summon Saber, but not before her counterpart suffered for it.

Ttoper's rage at the situation then abated, and he simply looked at the ground with a hard look on his face.

"Well?" Einzbern asked, impatience in his voice. "Are you going to give in to the inevitable or not? You have-"

"Thirty seconds." Troper interrupted, bringing his head up to look up at the other man.

Einzbern sneered at him. "Do you really think you are in a position to barter for time?"

Troper slowly stripped off his longcoat and tossed it to the ground. "You misunderstand. In thirty seconds, one of us will be dead." He then began to walk forward.

Rin, his Rin, seemed to know what he was doing, and started to thrash in her restraints. "Shirou, no! You can't do that again! You'll die!"

Troper did not respond to her, instead incanting "_My existence…_"

Einzbern gave a bored look. "You know what? We one need one. Kill him."

As a rush of flame came to meet the man, I barely heard Troper finish saying "… _is one of Tropes_."


	26. Chapter 18: Revelation

The wave of flames engulfed Troper, completely obscuring him from view. The fire pooled around the spot he was standing, making a makeshift pyre on the dock. I could feel the heat of the flames from where I was standing, and felt shock at how Troper just… let it happen. I though that he was going to do something!

"Hmp. Well, that was simple." Einzbern said. "Well, if that's all for this foolishness-"

"Uh, Sir?" The Enforcer who was responsible for the conflagration spoke up. "That spell isn't supposed to be behaving like that. It should have dissipated by now."

"What? Who cares? It's not like that-"

Whatever the man was about to say was cut off, as he was greeted by the sight of Troper walking calmly Out of the Inferno with not a mark on him.

In hindsight, probably should have seen that one coming.

"What?! Kill him! Kill him now!" Einzbern yelled.

Troper was already moving before the words left the other man's mouth, sprinting at top speed towards the magus. The Enforcer standing by his side had quick reflexes though, and stepped in front of Johan, swiftly muttering an incantation before a bolt of lightning lashed out. When it reached Troper, rather than frying him or even knocking him back, it simply… flowed around him like water, reforming on the other side of his body. It was incredibly strange to watch, and I had no idea how he was accomplishing it.

The Enforcer didn't have time to react either, as just as he registered what happened, Troper had reached him and stretched out his hand towards the other man's face. Rather than striking or grasping however, the hand simply slid into the man's skull as if it were a mirage that wasn't truly there.

It still seemed to be quite really to the Enforcer however, as the moment it happened he let out a blood curdling scream and collapsed to the ground, blood leaking from his ears and nose.

One of the two men close to his Rin yelled out. "Stop! Or I'll k-!" that was as far as he got before the chained woman smashed her manacled hands into his face, causing him to stumble back. Me and my Rin took this as a cue to stop standing around and do something, as I quickly breathed out "I am the bone of my sword," and launched a traced sword at the other man near the captive before he could make due on the other man's threat. It pierced through his neck the same moment Rin tossed out a gem that burst into a gust of razor wind, knocking the first man back lacerating him.

The sudden burst of motion and attacks had surprised the magi, but as they were accustomed to combat (save Einzbern), they quickly regrouped. Normally we wouldn't have stood a chance against them, but Troper seemed to be, for lack of a better term, untouchable. Any spells that came his way went through or bent around him, and physical attacks faired no better. Anyone that tried to touch him would end up having some kind of seizure before collapsing. I started to wonder why he had never done whatever it was he was doing now when I noticed something… off. It had only been a dozen or so seconds since he had started his attack, but his body was moving in strange jerking motions. There were blurs and after images around his person, and they seemed to be getting worse.

Still, I didn't have time to dwell on that at the moment. "Iron is my blood, and glass is my heart," I ground out while forming a wall of blades in front of me, slowing a man who came at me with mystic code hammer. The situation was tenuous at best, as we were still out numbered, and my Rin was trying to protect Troper's Rin while she searched one of her fallen guards for some reason or another.

Einzbern had tried to run soon after the fighting started, but Troper had gone after him and cut him off at every turn. It was a fairly easy task when he didn't have to worry about all of the spells being thrown his way trying to stop him. His target tried as well, throwing out several metallic spheres which glowed and moved at high speeds and strange trajectories which would have perforated a normal person. In Troper's current state though, he didn't even seem to notice them.

Soon Troper got close enough to strike at the man, but Einzbern had seen what his touch had done to the others and threw himself to the ground before the limb could connect. It didn't do him too much good though, as it left him sprawled on the ground and Troper standing over him. My counterpart's condition was looking worse, as it started to become difficult to make out his individual features. Still, this did not stop him, and he drew his fist back to strike at the man beneath him. "Promise made…"

"Stop him!" Einzbern screamed to his companions. "Stop him you incompetent fools!"

Three broke off from trying to kill the rest of us, diving at Troper in an attempt to stop him. They wouldn't make it in time, and it probably wouldn't matter if they did. His fist came down-

Suddenly I heard a voice call out "Strike Air!" A massive torrent of wind swept down from above and knocked the Enforcers closing in on the two of them away. I looked up to see Saber dropping down from the sky and landing next to my counterpart. Had Rin summoned her? Or did had she come back to find us? I wasn't sure, but I was certainly grateful for her presence. Though Troper might not have needed the help, the rest of us certainly did.

She turned to my counterpart and gave him a strange look. He himself had frozen mid punch and turned to look at her, a glazed, far away expression on what I could make out of his face. There was a moment where all was still, and I once again tried to figure out what was going on with him. With the way Troper had been interacting with thing, it was like his body wasn't really there. Or like it wasn't physical, or made out of-

My eyes widened as the realization hit me. The one line aria he had said, it was different from his original invocation of his Reality Marble. However, the structure of the line compared to one of my own made me realize what it was. It was his invocation to internal deploy it. Right now, whatever that meant, his existence was made of tropes.

And by the way he suddenly twitched after seeing Saber, it was consuming him.

Troper's hands came to his head, he let out a scream, and he… twisted was the only word I could use to describe it. I was reminded of nothing so much as that picture of a vase and two faces as I watched the blurs around him take shape, and he was simultaneously on his knees screaming, laughing madly at the heavens, weeping as he held his face in his hands and numerous other expressions.

Einzbern crawled away in terror and ran, but he did not get far before what ever it was that was affecting Troper spread outwards. Saber's superior speed allowed her to jump back before it reached her, but the other man was not so lucky. The ground beneath him warped and twisted and sent him tumbling to the ground. When he made to stand, the magus found that the part of dock he was standing on had been changed, and he was standing what looked to be a small patch of rocky desert. His attire had also changed, and he was now sporting black pants with a red long sleeve shirt. He looked down on himself in confusion, but it didn't last longs as a moment later a monster that looked like it wandered off a TV set appeared from behind on of the rocks and pounced on him.

I'm sure that Einzbern wouldn't have appreciated being cast as a Red Shirt if he knew what that meant, but it didn't matter in any case as while the monster looked cheesy, its claws were still quite effective.

The rest of the area around Troper was patchwork, shifting rapidly from different terrains and settings and even sometimes being several at once, in the center of which the man stood/knelt/cried/laughed/suffered/existed. While most of my attention was forced on the spectacle before me, I did notice the remaining Enforcers retreating. It seemed that they decided that with the addition of Saber and whatever it was around Troper coming into existence, things had become too much for them to handle.

Myself, Saber, and the two Rins had backed up some ways, though his Rin was the most frantic. "Saber! Get these off of me now!" she said, holding her manacled hands out to her. Saber obliged with a quick swipe of her sword, shattering the chain and the enchantment, causing the metal to fall to the ground. Rin then quickly turned back to the man she was searching earlier and found what she was looking for: a glove that was covered in a variety of different gems. She quickly slipped it on before turning and running towards the increasingly erratic maelstrom.

Saber however did not let her and swiftly moved behind and wrapped an arm around her waist. "Stop! You saw what happened to that man. The same could happen to you."

"I have to get to him!" Rin yelled, trying to squirm out the other woman's grasp but to no avail. "He's going to tear himself to pieces and dissolve if I can't stabilize him soon!"

"It's his Reality Marble, isn't it?" I asked. "He's lost control of it."

"Yes! It's going to consume him if you don't let me go!"

"You can't just going running into that-" my Rin gestured "like an idiot! You'll just get yourself killed!"

"If I don't, Shirou will die!" her counterpart spat back.

My mind raced to find a solution. How do you stop someone's Reality Marble? How do you stop someone from expressing their soul on the reality around them-

I straighten as I realized what I had to do. "I can suppress it." I said.

"How?" both Rins asked simultaneously.

"With my Reality Marble. It's never been done before, but I'm pretty sure you can't have two existing in the same area at the same time."

My Rin gave a start. "Shirou, you've never been able to successfully manifest since the War. What makes you think you can do so now?"

"I have to try." I said, and before she could say anything else I turned away and walked towards my counterpart. I had already started the first part of my aria at the beginning of the battle. I just had to do the rest now.

And hope that I didn't kill myself in the process.

"I have created over a thousand blades," I said as I walked closer to the edge of the madness. "Unaware of loss, Nor aware of gain," I had to be as close I a possibly could so that I could try to bring Troper in.

"I have withstood pain to create weapons, waiting for one's arrival," My teeth clenched at I felt pain through my circuits and my temperature begin to rise. In truth, this was the farthest I have ever come, and any other time I would have wondered why that was the case. However, I was now starting to feel the strain. Still, I was close. I had to press on.

Sucking in a pained breath, I stopped at the edge. "I have no regrets. This is my path." The heat increased and it felt like my body was on fire. I could do this. I had to.

With all the will I had, I shouted the last line. "My whole life has been… Unlimited Blade Works!"

Cold fire erupted from my body, and spread outward from me. It didn't travel far before it encountered the zone around Troper and things got a little... weird. As the edge of my field moved into his, it started to twist and distort like everything else, but not completely. I could make out the details of my Reality Marble, but it was like looking through a lens. In addition to the normal strain I expected from Gaia, there was another presence that was resisting my soul's realization.

_Pain, hate… loss _

It was more than that, though. I could feel it on my mind as well. It was similar to when I first saw Troper's Reality Marble, but it was more disjointed and erratic. It felt less like tropes and more like memories. I grimaced as the cold fire moved forward slowly, pushing as much of my prana I dared into it to keep it moving forward. I just had to get it to reach his person. Just a little more...

The edge touched Troper-

"_Strike Air!" Saber yelled as she swept out her blade, knocking away the closest Enforcers. You would think they would have realized that it was pointless to attack a Servant by this point, but apparently you'd be wrong. Of course, they really were just trying to keep her occupied._

"_I believe that is quite enough out of you." Johan Einzbern said from his position off to the side. He made no movements other than to smile smugly at her._

_Saber turned to face him, bringing her invisible sword to bear against him. "Magus! You will explain this assault at once!"_

"_Oh it is quite simple really," he replied. "You are a Servant." _

_Saber flinched slightly at this declaration. She had managed to keep it a secret from the Clock Tower for the past 5 years. How had they found out? "And what of it?"_

"_The Grail was corrupted, a fact which was so... helpfully provided by your master." Einzbern said with only the slightest twitch if his face. As a member of one of the three families who founded the Ritual, it had come to a serious blow to their pride when Rin had conclusively proved that thing had been corrupted for about seventy years without them noticing. "And yet in spite of all of her effort to dismantle the Heaven's Feel, she still decided to keep you around. Rather hypocritical all things considered. After all, there's no telling what the Grail's corruption has done to you."_

_The blonde woman scowled at him. "I am not corrupted! None of the Servants save the one from the previous war had any direct contact with the Grail, and he was destroyed!"_

"_Please forgive me if I do not take your word for it." Einzbern remarked, his smug sneer returning. "I am afraid we simply can't take that chance, so you will have to be destroyed."_

_It was all just a flimsy pretense of course. Though I'm sure that personal revenge for his family's humiliation played a part in it, the real reason (and the reason why the Clock Tower had approved) was that Saber represented a significant threat. It gave Rin, who was mostly considered a low level player in the politics of the tower, a substantial amount of weight if it came down to actual confrontation. Those already entrenched within the Clock Tower did not like the idea that they could be so easily sweep aside by someone so insignificant if push came to shove. So it came as little surprise that they decided to remove the problem as soon as they found out about it._

_Of course, Saber had no intention of that happening. Wind began to pick up around her as her stance deepened. "You shall find that task far more difficult that you seem to think. It does not matter how many of you come at me, I will strike them all down."_

_Einzbern's expression did not waver. "Oh of course you would. As an Einzbern, I am well aware of how far beyond us you are in terms of raw power. Which is why I have brought something to ensure your cooperation."_

_He made a gesture, and a pair of rough hands grabbed me and pulled me forward, bringing me past the circle of men and women that surrounded the Servant. A rustling beside me showed that they did the same with Rin as well. Saber's eyes widened at the sight of us, injured and chained in magical bindings which prevented us from using our magecraft. Our captor continued. "You seem to be one of those honorable types of heroes that serve your master faithfully, so this should be quite simple for you. Either submit, or I will kill your master and her apprentice."_

_Saber's gaze rounded on the man, her eyes filled with fury. "Magus! How dare you use them like this?! I swear that I will kill-!"_

"_I think not." He cut her off before an orange glow came from his hand, a similar light coming from the metal collars that had been put around mine and Rin's neck. "If you kill me now, my spell will release and those two will find themselves without their heads. And you wouldn't want that, would you?" Saber froze in place, her teeth grinding as she stared at the man in hatred. Einzbern did not notice or did not care as he continued talking. "You see it would be simple to get rid of you by just killing your master now, but as she has been uncooperative in telling us just which Heroic Spirit you are, we don't know if you have Independent Action. Even if you didn't, you could likely do a fair amount of damage to this institution out of spite before you fade from existence. However, I promise that if you let us destroy you without incident, no harm will come to these two."_

"_Don't even think abo-!" That was as far as I got before a fist connected with my skull, dazing me and causing my neck to go limp. As my head rolled I caught a glimpse of Rin, who was in a worse state than I was. They had been quite forceful in trying to get her to tell them Saber's identity, and now she was barely conscious._

_While I could only look at the ground, I could hear Saber say "How can I trust you? Nothing you have shown me thus far makes me believe that you have any honor!"_

_Even though I wasn't looking at him, I could somehow tell that Einzbern had put on a mock expression of hurt. "Madam, you wound me. I give you my word as a member of the most Noble House of Einzbern. And besides, you're not in a position to have much of a choice."_

_I managed to crane my neck up to look at the woman I had summoned all those years ago. She was looking back and forth between him, me and Rin. There just had to be a way out of this one. I sure as hell didn't survive all of that bullshit in the Grail War just to have my story end like this._

_Then Saber straightened. Ah, she looked like she has an idea. I ready myself for her to give me some kind of clue as to what she had planned._

_Still, I at least shared a little surprise with the Enforcers around me when she began to draw her sword._

_Einzbern took on a panicked look as wind once again whipped around her and a golden light emerged from her hands. "W-what are you doing? Do you think I won't-" he cut himself off as she finished, now beholding the glory that was Excalibur._

_The circle of magi was silent but tense. No one was sure what she would do next. However, rather than attack or speak to Einzbern again, she instead turned to Rin and I. "Shirou, Rin," she said. "When I came into this world 5 years ago, I thought that there was no humanity left in me. That I was not meant to know happiness."_

_I blinked in confusion. I didn't get it. Was she trying to tell me the plan in code or something?_

_She then gave us a smile. "You proved me wrong. My time with you have been the happiest in my existence. You have given me love, and let me know what it is to love in return. I will never forget what you have done for me."_

_This… wasn't a plan. This sounded like-_

_Saber's smile became sad, and tears trailed down her face. "I love you."_

_She then took her blade, turned it around in her hands and drove it through her heart._

_I felt own heart stop, and everything seemed to fall still. There was an instant of silence before a scream tore its way out of my throat. "NO!" I could hear Rin screaming alongside me as well. I couldn't control myself. I surged forward, and maybe it was the surprise of what Saber just did, or maybe the man holding me hadn't expected me to move, but I wasn't stopped from rushing to her side. She had slumped down onto her knees, and she started to fall back before I caught her. It was difficult with my hands bound like they were, but I wasn't going to let her go._

"_Saber! Just hold on!" I screamed as I reflexively tried to pull Avalon out of my body, only to be greeted with the sensation of pain lacing through me just as my circuits activated. The damn enchantments on the bindings wouldn't even let me do that! Come on, think! There had to be something, anything to save her!_

"_Shirou," she managed to say through her blood stained lips. "It's alright…"_

"_No it not!" I yelled through my own tears. "It's not supposed to end this way! You're supposed to get your happily ever after! You deserve it more than anyone!" I began to sob. "This isn't… it's not…"_

_She reached up to touch my face. "You were my happily ever after…" she whispered, her body already starting to dissolve into golden motes. "You and Rin were more than I ever hoped for…"_

_She shouldn't have been content with this. It wasn't right. I wanted to tell her as much, but I found I couldn't in the face of the smile she was giving me. There was only one thing I could say to that face. "I-I love you."_

"_Thank you… my… beloveds." She said as she closed her eyes, and then she simply faded and slipped through my hands._

_She was gone. The woman who started everything for me was gone. Only emptiness remained._

_I'm not sure how long I knelt there staring at my empty hands. All I knew was that eventually I heard Einzbern bark out a laugh. "Really? The reason you kept a Servant alive on your own power for all these years was for such a trite reason as love? Oh that is truly pathetic."_

_Every nerve in my body turned to ice at the sentence, and the hole in my chest filled with a rage that I had never felt before. There was only one thing I could do now. Only one way for this to play out. Every circuit in my body flared as I said "My existence," and the pain returned even greater this time. The bindings were meant to fry me from the inside out if I tried to use magic. As so, with all of my circuits at maximum, I died._

_It did not stop me._

"_-is one of Tropes!"_

Reality slammed back into me with a jolt and I stumbled, losing my balance and falling to the ground. I felt absolutely terrible, and the patches of numbness all over my body told me that I had over extended myself again. _What happened? _I thought to myself. _Did I give myself a stroke again? I had the weirdest vision of Saber being found out by the Clock Tower…_

As I shakily tilted my head back up, I was greeted with the odd sight of myself lying on the ground a dozen or so feet away, and the situation came back to me in a rush. Right, I was trying to suppress Shirou's- Troper's Reality Marble. It looked like I succeeded, though he still didn't look good.

I saw Rin run up to the man, pressing her gloved hand to his chest and a glow started to emanate from it. A moment later I felt someone pick me up and found it to be Saber. At the sight of her, I was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion and kissed her, my eyes watering with tears of joy at her presence. Naturally she was very confused, but she didn't immediately pull back. I managed to get myself under control, reminding myself that what I had seen hadn't happened to me. It was difficult.

Sparing an embarrassed look at the woman who was holding me up, I turned to the Rin, who was kneeling over Troper. "Will he be alright?"

"I don't know yet." She snapped. "This takes time."

"Well can you hold off on it for a while?" My Rin asked. "We need to get out of here. Those Enforcers are going to be back with reinforcements."

"If I stop for too long, he'll die!" The other one snapped back. "We can't make it back to the Inn. If we have to hide, we have to do it nearby."

I gave a grimace, but I looked around. "How about over there?" I pointed to a mess of warehouses a good ways down the dock. "We can probably hide in one of those. And if we're lucky, they will think we were smarter than sticking around the place they last saw us."

The females present gave me an annoyed look for my snark, but they didn't have any better suggestions. Rin stopped her work on the other man so that Saber could pick him up in a fireman carry with her other arm and the lot of us ran down the pier. I could still see Troper give the occasion twitch and mutter.

I wish I didn't know why.


	27. Chapter 19: Dreaming of a Past

I carefully crept away from the broken window of the warehouse to retreat back to the room where the rest of us were staying. It had been a full hour since the battle (if you could call it that) with the magi and night had fallen on the city. It was likely we would spend the rest of the night hiding in the building to avoid detection. I much would have preferred to leave considering how close we were to where we were last seen, but with Troper still in his near catatonic state, I didn't know if it was safe to move him. I still wasn't fully aware of just what his Reality Marble had done to him or why, and Tohsaka (as I started to call her to not confuse her with my Rin) had been too busy trying to heal him to elaborate.

I returned to the small room in the back of the abandoned warehouse where I found the women much in the same position I left them, with Tohsaka leaning over Troper's prone form, Rin standing over the two of them in careful study and Saber standing guard at the door. As a walked in, Saber relaxed slightly and gave me a small nod before relaxing slightly. Looking back at Tohsaka, I asked "Is he doing any better?"

She gave a sigh as she leaned back and took her hand of his chest, the glow from her strange jewel covered glove diming. "I've done all I can. While I would never use the word 'stable' to describe his current condition, it's more likely than not that he'll be able to recover on his own." Troper, lying on the ground with his duster pillowed under his head, almost looked like he was having a nightmare. He was pale, and his body and face occasionally twitching.

Rin arched an eyebrow at her counterpart. "Recover from what, exactly? For that matter, what the hell did he do?"

Tohsaka gave her a look of annoyance. "I don't see how that's any of your business."

"Excuse me? It's my business because he almost killed all of us!"

"After he saved all of our lives, you ungrateful twit!"

"See here you second rate copy, I-!"

"Rin Tohsaka!" I shouted, using their full names to grab their attention. "This is not the time to be arguing. Nor is it to be holding things back." I said, looking at the dimensional traveler. Looking back at mine, I said "You know how I had been studying to internally deploy my Reality Marble before I left? That's what he did."

Rin gave me a confused look. "So, it somehow went wrong? But you told me that he was actually better than you when it came to Reality Marbles. Didn't you say that he actually deployed it externally when he first got here?"

At this, Tohsaka shook her head. "It's not a matter of skill, it's the nature of his powers." She turned to me. "If I remember correctly, you're a Sword incarnate, correct? So I'm guessing that when you deploy it internally, your body turns into a bunch of swords or some such like that."

"Well, yes." I replied to her rather casual summation of my ability.

"Exactly. His," she said tilting her head down at Troper, "works the same way."

A frown settled on Saber's face. "Wait, so you're saying that his body turns into… tropes? I do not understand how that is possible."

"To be honest, I don't really understand it either," Tohsaka said wearily. "The best description I have for it is that he turns into some kind of quasi-metaphysical being, and his body stops obeying physical laws in favor of narrative ones."

"That… doesn't really help at all." Rin remarked.

Tohsaka gave an annoyed grunt. "Look, it's like this: if someone made a story about your life, would it be a very good story if it ended on that pier? After everything you've been through and everything you still have to do?"

"Not really." The other woman replied after a moment.

"Right. He couldn't be killed during that fight because it would have made for a terrible story otherwise." She shook her head. "However, that's not important. What is important is how that affects his mind."

"Why would it-" I began before a thought suddenly struck me. "Mental contamination."

When I had started to do research into my Reality Marble, I mostly had to do so from scratch given that it was a forbidden topic of research. However, there was a bit of information in the Clock Tower archives that had been made available about the results of some failed attempts by magi who tried to create one. It was likely done to serve as a warning for anyone had thoughts of researching the topic themselves; though it was anyone's guess as to just how effective it was (it certainly didn't stop me). While most suffered from general insanity, some who had gotten farther and had become partially able to manifest their world view had been, for lack of a better term, consumed by their own power. They had turned into twisted, inhuman things before meeting a rather gruesome end. I was dimly aware that I was risk of having that happen to me, but the memories I had gotten from Archer gave me enough skill to keep that sort of thing from happening.

"Yes." Tohsaka confirmed. "In someone else's case, that would only happen if they truly lost control and became overwhelmed by the very concept of their Reality Marble. But Shirou? When he deploys it internally, his body made of nothing but concepts. He essentially feels the entire weight of it on his mind and it eats away at him. Normally he can keep it contained or separate from himself, but he doesn't have that allowance in that state."

Rin began to nod in understanding. "So he can only hold it for so long before he… falls apart."

"And then his power spills out of him." Saber added.

Rin turned to me. "And that's when you figured that if you could deploy your Reality Marble, even if it was for such a short distance and time, you could suppress his power and let him get back to normal."

I gave a shrug. "It seemed logical at the time. It's a good thing it did work too, as I have no idea how he managed to stop himself the last time it hap-" I abruptly cut off as I realized that I was speaking of something that I shouldn't know about.

Unfortunately, Tohsaka still noticed and looked at me with a very suspicious and intense look. "And just what do you know about the last time this happened to my Shriou?"

"Uh," I said while I tried to think of a way around explaining that I had seen a very personal memory that I shouldn't have. However, I knew better than to try lying to Rin Tohsaka, so after a moment I slumped my shoulders and said "Did Troper ever tell you how he ended up absorbing Archer's memories?"

Tohsaka blinked in confusion at the apparent non-sequitur. "Yes, he said that when he and Archer were inside his Reality Marble, the two of… them…" she trailed off and her face became a shade paler. "Oh. How much did you see?"

"Bits and pieces, but that particular event was quite clear."

"Wait, I do not understand." Saber spoke up. "What happened?"

"Back when I fought Archer in his Unlimited Blade Works, the similarity of our souls allowed a sort of resonance between the two of us, causing memories to be exchanged." I explained. "Troper and I have had a similar connection ever since he got here, albeit a much weaker one given how different we are from each other. However, with both our souls manifested at the same time…" I trailed off as I tried to properly express what happen without accidently slipping into an innuendo that would cause both Rins to undoubtedly make fun of me. "Well, let's just say the connection was briefly increased, and the memory that I saw was the one most relevant to the situation."

"Ok, so what made him go all end of the world mode the last time?" Rin asked.

I didn't say anything, and looked to Tohsaka instead. It really wasn't my place to say, after all.

She didn't say anything for several moments, instead looking at Troper's prone form. Eventually, she simply said. "That was the day we lost Saber."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence before Saber said "That is enough. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

To my surprise, Tohsaka replied "It's fine. I haven't really talked about it with anyone other than him for the past few years." She gave a small sniff as she gestured at the man before her. "Though it's not much a of a story really. The Clock Tower found out that Saber was a Heroic Spirit left over from the war when an Apostle Hunt went bad, and she had to save everyone. The High Lords did not like the idea of me having control of such powerful spirit. So, they chose to eliminate her."

Saber gave a somewhat indignant huff. "I would hope that they had some trouble with that. I would doubt that any mage in this day and age would be able to bring me low easily."

Tohsaka let out a sad and bitter laugh. "Yeah, that's what they thought too. Which is why they captured the two of us first and threatened to kill us if she didn't submit."

"What! Of all the dishonorable, disgraceful-"

"That's was she thought, too," the dark haired woman said, a small bit of mirth shining through before she slipped back into melancholy. "Of course, you can guess what happened next. Saber sacrificed herself to save us. Shirou… lost it." A small grim smile crossed her face. "He made them pay for it though."

A silence settled among us. Rin and Saber reflected on what that must have been like, but I didn't have to. I had all but lived it. "So, how did he snap out of it that time?" I asked.

"Zelretch." Tohsaka replied. "I'm not sure if we got lucky or if it's just more evidence of Shirou's power's being absurd, but the Wizard Marshal appeared and did… something before things got out of hand. He took an interest in Shirou's power, and gave us an offer. If we turned him down, he would leave us be, but that would mean we'd have to deal with the Clock Tower on our own, and considering Shirou had just killed a fair number of them as well as showing the true nature of his powers…" she trailed of for a moment and shivered. "I wasn't going to lose him. Not after Saber."

"So what was the deal?" Rin asked, curious what a person like Zelretch would want with the pair.

"That we would go with him and become his apprentices, but it was more than that. He wanted something from us. Well," Tohsaka grumbled. "Something from Shirou. I was brought along as a sort of… clean slate, a fresh perspective to analyze the Second Magic. Even now I'm not sure of the full extent of what he has planed for us, but he promised us that by helping him… we would find a way to save Saber."

I blinked in confusion at this statement. "How could you possibly do that? She died. Were you trying to start the Heaven's Feel Ritual again?"

"Absolutely not." She replied with a small amount of venom. "I've had more than enough of that for one lifetime. Besides, I doubt that it would have worked. Saber had made her choice."

"What do you mean?"

Instead of answering Tohsaka gave a meaningful glance at Saber. The Servant shifted a little and she was the one to answer. "I believe she means that my counterpart chose to let go." A pair of stares from me and Rin got her to continue. "I have told you how I am different from the other Servants, how I still have my body. You know that I made a deal with the World to try for the Holy Grail in exchange for service. However, if I chose, I could nullify the deal at any time."

"What? What would happen then?" Rin asked.

"Between my manifestations of when I am summoned, I return to the moment just before my death. If I chose and the deal was nullified, I would simply return and die. I would only do so if I thought that I could never achieve my goal of restoring Britain." She shifted uncomfortably. "However, since I have come t be with you and lived in the world for some time, I have started to think that what I have done in the past is not something I should be ashamed of, or should be changed."

"And when Saber dies, her soul will go to the Fey land of Avalon, where not even the most powerful of magics can reach." Tohsaka said in a distant tone.

"But if that's the case, then what are you-" I started before it hit me. "You're trying to find a way into Avalon?"

Tohsaka gave a small snort. "If only it were that simple. No, while I imagine that Zelretch would like to try that some day, I don't think well ever be able to do that. What he wants us for, and what were trying to do, is related to an aspect of the Second Magic which the Wizard Marshal has yet to master: Time."

There was pause before Rin said slowly "You're trying to save Saber… using time travel?"

"…sort of." Tohsaka replied before she gestured in frustration. "It doesn't work like that. Time isn't a line that you can just go up and down. It's all probabilities and outcomes. And just looking at things, much less going to actual times, changes those probabilities and outcomes. You could almost never actually go to the past, as doing so would cause it to split off into a whole new parallel world. I say almost because she," she said as she pointed at Saber. "proves otherwise."

Saber arched an eyebrow. "I don't understand how my own situation helps you in this regard."

The other woman sighed. "It truth, it really just proves it possible. We have… well, Shirou has an idea, and it's the best one we've got." She turned to me. "You've been browsing that accursed website. Are you familiar with the tricked out time trope?"

I gave it a moment's thought. "That's the one where time travel occurs so people can go back and fix something, but make everything look like it happened the way it originally did, right?"

"Right. When Saber's soul went back for the final time, there are a few moments before she dies and the gates of Avalon are opened for her. With the sheath implanted in Shirou, we can find out when the gates where last opened. If we do it right, we can go back, save her before she dies, and bring her back with us, with history saying King Arthur died that day as he should."

Rin frowned at this. "That's… rather complicated, and sounds like its based mostly on conjecture and theories. Do you really think it'll work?"

Tohsaka didn't reply at first, instead looking down at Troper. She knelt down and began to wipe the sweat off of his forehead. "It doesn't matter what I believe." She finally said. "He believes he can do it. He believes with all of his soul." She turned to give me a meaningful look. "When a person like the two of you believes in something that much, what's actually possible isn't really a consideration."

There wasn't much else to be said after that. Tohsaka continued to tend to the man, and the rest of us stood around for a minute or two, thinking about the plight of the two in front of us. Eventually, Rin asked "Do you think we can head back now?"

I grimaced. "I wouldn't want to risk it. I still haven't completely recovered from my own Reality Marble, and we'd still have to carry Troper back with us."

Saber nodded. "Then you should rest for a while longer. I will take watch." With that, she left the room to go patrol near the other end of the warehouse.

I felt the weariness start to sink into my body, but I didn't want to collapse right there. I felt out of place being in the same room as my counterpart and Tohsaka, so I took my leave to find a place to settle down. I came across what looked to be an old office with a dusty couch in it. I briefly thought of going back to get Troper so that he could lie on it, but exhaustion won out and I flopped down on my back.

As I closed my eyes and got settled I thought about what I would have done if I had faced the same thing my counterpart had. Things had come very close back in London to playing out in a similar manner with me in place of Saber. Death was something I had accepted in my life, and yet the thought of losing someone I cared about in such a way… I tried to rid myself of such thoughts. _With the way things are going now, I might lose the ones I love at anytime,_ I thought to myself. _All I can really do is make the best of the time I have with them._

I was about to drift off when I felt a weight collapse onto my chest. I let out a wheeze and my eyes opened to find Rin, my Rin, lying down on top of me. Considering how things had been going between us as of late, I was rather surprised by this. "What… Rin, why-?"

"D-don't misunderstand." She grumbled into my chest. "I'm still mad at you. This doesn't change anything. I'm just tired and you're the only piece of furniture I can lay on."

"Don't you mean I'm on the only piece of furniture you can lay on?" I asked with an arched eyebrow.

"Whichever. Now quiet. Futons don't talk." With that she wrapped her arms around my neck and seemed to drift off.

I looked at her for a moment longer before a small smile crossed my face and I wrapped my arms around her in kind. It wouldn't last, but right then, we were able to shut out all the problems of the world and be together.


End file.
